


Fuocoso

by psalloacappella



Series: Equilibrium [19]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Have Issues (Naruto), Drama, F the shinobi state, F/M, Gen, Genjutsu Affinity, Haruno Sakura & Yamanaka Ino Friendship, Haruno Sakura is the glue of this team, Rogue ANBU, Shinobi Politics (Naruto), Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: A crackle in the dirt, the energy of his dear children, he swears, prompting the earth to shudder underneath their feet."They'll come for you in seven days."❦Time ticks away. Reunited, Team Seven prepares to depart for their first mission, but not without ensnaring one another, and those that love them, into their convoluted myths.(In which they learn about what they've missed, and how to come together again.)
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Equilibrium [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/46843
Comments: 38
Kudos: 115





	1. Sette

**Author's Note:**

> ILT7  
> sasu's in love

_"What is a country but a life sentence?"_

❦

“What d’ya mean, a week?”

A ghost of a laugh, one he’s eager to indulge, lingers. It’s a mark of how serious Tsunade looks when he doesn’t let it get that far. Confusion, though – that’s all over his whiskered face. 

Kakashi instead casts glances at the other two, now breathing hard for reasons other than what he suspects they were ripped from. With or without a Sharingan, he’s not and has never been an idiot, nor blind. The young are obvious in their frenzied obsessions, something he’s both understanding of but, achingly, not sure he’s ever truly experienced himself. 

He knows what she does to her closest people; fills them with love when they don’t deserve it. It’s no wonder they’d been so close, too close. 

Feels the tangles, the give and take. Filling in the cracks, seeping in as an adhesive. 

Sakura’s eyes harden in the dim light, boring a hole into the side of her boss’s skull. The blotchy anger in her face floods her cheeks and chest, filling out the rosy, mussed splotches left by the lipstick. In reflex she makes to guard her side, the one recently pierced through – her arm fails halfway, dangles limply. “You can’t do this.”

Tsunade ignores her, focuses her attention on Naruto instead. It’s strategic either way, but Kakashi wonders if it’s because she can’t quite look her in the eye.

“I don’t have to be telling you like this at all,” Tsunade says. The unbothered, neutral expression she’s aiming for is delicate, with tiny rifts in it mirroring small fissures in the earth, thin and spidery cracks like ice. “If you were any other team, I would call you in and tell you, and you wouldn’t argue. I could _order_ you. Send you all halfway across the world with a flick of the wrist.”

Sakura’s snort of disbelief is more scathing than words may have been. “You’re defending it.”

Naruto glances at Sasuke, a quiet shadow in the corner. Pale, bruises looking garish and dazed in the odd half-light, with the sun beginning to bend over the rooftops and around corners, he’s a statue. What’s pulled his gaze to his friend is the slow blink, a glittering red emerging after the slow bounce of his eyelashes. Knowing him in a way unlike anyone else, sees his mind working, threads twining and neurons firing and all of the complications knitting themselves together. Always difficult to read. Frozen, foreboding, hand crushed deep into his pocket and not moving once since they’ve been summoned, Naruto wants him to make his thoughts known and angry in the defiant way that he does. It’s better than this tension, and it’s better than letting Sakura’s temper spill over.

Naruto folds his arms, resolute. Returns his attention to his Hokage. “Since when have a bunch of shadows scared a mean, frightening woman like you?”

This time, there’s not even a hint of a laugh. There’s no defense from her former student. Tsunade, however, is not one to be lectured by anyone. 

“This isn’t personal,” she barks. Arms folded underneath her ample chest since the beginning of the conversation, the only notion of regret is reflected in her manicured fingernails digging into the opposite arm. “It’s political.”

“There’s nothing you three can do.” Kakashi opts for a soothing tone, but Sakura’s reaction shows him it’s the wrong tack.

“So your solution is to send us away? Like cowards? That’s what they’ll say you know – that we’re cowards!”

“You are shinobi.” And now Tsunade turns fully to face Sakura, trading Naruto’s anger for the brunt of hers. “You just reformed as a team; you will be assigned missions. Don’t patronize me, like I haven’t thought ahead.”

“Men have been following me and your solution is to send me away!” Sakura’s voice narrows at the close, threatening to warble in pitch. “This is my home.”

“Didn’t know you had such an issue going back in the field.” It’s a low blow, a cheap shot to distract from the larger, looming truth. If nothing else, her office hasn’t made her less ruthless. Sasuke’s eyes cut to the Hokage with a snap like sparks on flint; Kakashi winces. 

Naruto starts to get red, righteously so on her behalf. “Don’t you say that garbage about her you—”

“You think I don’t see what you’re doing?” Sakura bites her lip, feels her heartbeat climbing and spiking. Bands of tension blooming around her chest in the way of a straightjacket. “You’re terrified. Even you aren’t completely sure of what’s going on, and sending us away is a cover for the fact that powerful people, whether in our village or not, don’t want us running around. We’re supposed to rebuild and instead it’s breaking down. It’s symbolic. It’s a stunt. _You’re_ the coward.”

The last sentence comes out as a hiss, quiet in the domestic sounds of houses and shops closing up for the night. Not disabusing her of the sentiment, Tsunade looks at her still with a blank expression, absorbing the vitriol. 

A long silence stretches and careens into the fading light, words exchanged through quick-cut, fleeting catches of the eyes. Naruto’s chest is heaving, and he twists around to look at Kakashi, beseeching, but the latter’s eyes are moving from Tsunade, still stony, to Sakura; the women don’t break gaze with one another. Sakura’s angry tears that she blinks away suggest it may not stay. Tsunade blinks rapidly and then away, the single admission of her uncertainty and apology, the things she cannot say out loud.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go. You told me—”

“Plans change. Think of it more as a . . . postponement.” 

Kakashi’s eyes land on Sasuke last. Not quite sure what he’s seeing in the stony scowl that tries to arrange itself into something flat, emotionless. A flash of pain, here and then gone. A crackle in the dirt, the energy of his dear children, he swears, prompting the earth to shudder underneath their feet. 

Tsunade’s voice returns, a soft hiss. “They’ll come for you in seven days.”

Now Sakura mirrors her, arms folding across her torso in a taut compress. 

“You three will be on a mission, one that’s considered critical to village security. It will be off-book, signed, and sealed. It’s not as if that isn’t true.”

Kakashi stirs at this, flashing a searing, searching look at his Hokage. In every conversation, something flashes and flicks between the words and folds, and in her fashion, she is one of the best at weaving layers in a way that belies her looks and abrasive personality. Perhaps the office has changed her in some ways. _And in that case._ He watches Sakura, wondering if it’s also a talent she’s gleaned.

He watches as an outsider, parts enacted on a public stage. 

Almost sends him down a burrowing void into a thorny chaparral of questions. A reexamination of those dangerous moments when he sees her in the ways he shouldn’t.

“This time in a week, at 0600 hours, they’ll be breaking down the door of your apartment. Which means in reality, they’ll do it not long after midnight.”

“Let us take care of them,” Naruto growls. Punches his angry, shaking fist into the opposite palm with an unnerving _slap_ of rough skin on skin. 

Sasuke’s dark expression conveys his agreement. Tsunade hardly needs to look at him to know this. Sakura’s glittering, piercing green eyes almost hurt; she avoids them again, but she presses on even if it’s a kick in the heart with every new detail. 

Better angry than dead.

Her words are slow, judicious. “The second we hit back, the second we let you loose on them – we draw that line in the sand. Then it’s an opposition, and we’ve made our position very clear.” 

Sakura swallows, for all the world looking like she’s devoured poison.

“There are some things,” Tsuande continues, “that I need you all to investigate. I can’t trust all of them to report to me without letting things slip. This is of the utmost importance. You can’t get caught by them. If you do, I can’t protect you.”

It comes out as an automatic reflex, an ingrained response to an order. Lips hardly move. “Right.”

Tsunade’s eyes flicker to Sasuke, and away. “And if you have anything important to work out amongst yourselves, I suggest you do it soon.”

Sasuke doesn’t miss the dig. 

“How long will we be gone?” 

Naruto’s question seems to die in his throat, snuffing out at the end.

The pause stretches on, endless in its silence. “As long as you need to be.”

“Bullshit,” flies off Sakura’s lips. Sasuke’s frown chisels deeper at the sound, reacting as if to a sharp slap. “I run a hospital. It’s _my_ hospital.” And here the hurt starts to wobble her words; to cover it, she starts to shrug her shoulders, pull at the white coat’s sleeves. “You’re – you’re fucking up! Like we’re pawns in your games. _Politics._ ” 

The last word is a mean sneer, and Naruto tries to call out to her. Again, it fades in his throat. In the face of her hurt and anger, he sometimes feels hopeless. 

Tsunade watches her struggle with the coat, unmoving.

Sakura succeeds in its removal and smashes it into a ball. Tosses it at the ground with a shotput arm at her Hokage’s feet. 

“Like we’re tools.”

Lifts her chin with defiance, cosmetics smudged, looking like she might spit.

Their stances are mirrored. Streetlights begin to flicker on, tentative in the creeping dusk.

“You’d do well to remember . . . that’s what you are.”

A shudder, a violent shake sweeps through Sakura, the last leaf on an austere branch. Her teammates feel it pull them too, their souls knotted up in strings. When she turns on her heel and leaves, kicking up angry dust, it yanks them somewhere deep in the heart, a hook embedded in the cavernous atrium. Like there’s no choice, and they ache with her.

Sasuke turns his back on his Hokage and leaves without a sound. Not a single glance back.

The tips of Naruto’s ears are still burning with anger as he goes after them. He passes Tsunade with a parting shot: “She said everything I wanted to.”

Only Kakashi remains. It’s another full minute before he heaves a weary sigh.

“I imagine that’s not how you wanted this to go?”

Tsunade doesn’t look at him, and her voice is only wobbly at the edges as she responds. “Isn’t that how it always goes with these guys?” Her laugh is caustic, covering up pain as she continues. “You could have done it, if you wanted. If I’m honest, though, I didn’t think you could impress how serious this was on them.”

Her companion frowns, weighing this. “I’m sure you can see how much this hurt her. It feels like betrayal, and like a punishment.”

“Maybe,” she says, cold and crisp, “you’re pushing the envelope on how concerned and involved you should be.”

A million comments, all of which he holds behind his lips. Should keep there.

“A bond between a teacher and a student doesn’t usually dissipate. You know that. I know that. No matter how much they grow, we don’t lose that. When we enter into this – teaching, it’s not a contract. It’s something forged in a formative point of their lives. We spend more time with them than their own families. I think . . . it’s something we forget.”

The night’s sounds seem hovering and endless. 

“They may not be my team anymore,” he says, “but I want them back alive.”

A laugh bursts from her lips, abrupt and harsh. “Do we ever really forget our teams? The people we lose? Damn it, I’m trying to save them.” 

“You set her up for something significant, and then ripped it out from under her. She kept her temper well, considering. Not to mention,” he adds, “they were likely just starting to feel somewhat normal again.”

“You’re much softer than you were, Kakashi.”

“Perhaps. But maybe . . . the way they conceive of the future of the shinobi system isn’t such a bad thing.”

She lets this linger in the air. He continues.

“And you’re much softer than you used to be as well.”

As befits her status, he politely pretends not to hear the sad sound in her throat, the crackles of her knuckles as they curl into fists. 

Nor the fraying in her voice when she says, “You’re dismissed.” 

  
❦

Her knees hit the dust, arms folding across her stomach as if everything’s spilling out and she’s desperately trying to hold it all in. Bent, crimped like a bass clef, chin on her chest. Breaths unevenly bursting from her lips.

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto breathes, leaning down to put a hand on her shoulder. 

Sasuke stands between them and the shops on the street, as if to shield them from streetlights, but his Sharingan catches the near-dusk glitter above the horizon. His jaw is clenched, and again he rubs his mouth with his fingers. Lingering, with a strange expression. Naruto watches him, wondering again if Sasuke knows something not shared with him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s been left out of a complicated plan. Sakura falling to pieces in front of him scares him more than he would ever say, and the slightly unsettled feeling from Sasuke makes it worse.

“Not here,” Sasuke says quietly. 

“I’m—” Sakura coughs and starts again. “I should explain.”

“What’s going on?” Naruto demands, looking back and forth between the two. “I hate when you leave me out of stuff because you think I’m an idiot.”

“Naruto, I’ll tell you—but not here.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m okay. I’m just a terrible liar. Sorry.”

He snorts and tries to pat her on the head. Embarrassed, she tries to swat it away, but he mostly succeeds. A ruffle of affection she lets him have, because of the look in his ocean eyes. “Yeah, I know that personally.”

Sasuke raises an eyebrow, a fleeting half second that smooths away into nothing. Surveying the street in both directions, he kneels on his haunches next to Sakura, fingers cradling her elbow.

“Sorry,” she says again, shaking her head back and forth rapidly. “I don’t usually insult my boss that much. Even for show.”

“Wait.” Naruto screws up his face, thinking hard. Starts rubbing his hair with both hands, generating static and coaxing it into spikes. “I can’t believe _I’m_ saying this, but we need to talk about this. I need to be involved too!”

“You’re right.” She says this faintly, a scraping whisper. Raising a knee to get to her feet, she leans into Sasuke’s grip.

Naruto puts a hand to his head like he’s dizzy. “I can’t keep up with this! Fake fights with the Hokage? Our village is breaking into our house? To what, arrest us?”

Finally, Sasuke lifts her elbow, helping her to her feet. Passing her palm across her knees to rid them of dust, her other hand presses in a closed fist against her lips. Green eyes edged and sharp as they bore into his, both colors an almost painful burst against his shadowed appearance in the rapidly unfolding evening. 

Doesn’t need to hear it out loud. _Breathe._

A long, slow exhale. Dissipating in the way of a specter or a spattering of clouds. Rooted to the earth by his gentle hold on her elbow, even as reality threatens to toss them off the ride. 

She’s not exactly sure what he’s thinking, when he looks at her this way. 

Instead, she speaks to Naruto. “We have to look like we’ve had a falling out. Like we’re not in favor with our superiors, so that no one can accuse our government of nepotism or anything untoward. We’re too visible now.”

Naruto groans, again looking between the two. Rubs his hands up and down his face as if eager to remove a layer of skin. “You _just_ said we couldn’t talk about it here.” 

Sasuke finally lets his hand fall from her, eyes sweeping the street once again as she continues: 

“The charges won’t matter. At this point, it means that for all the work everyone’s been doing, it’s not enough to keep those dangerous factions from finding justification to step in. Disguised as a rogue arm of disillusioned ANBU, of course. ”

“Why, though? What’s the point of a Hokage that can’t force them to stop?”

“It’s complicated, Naruto.” Sakura presses fingers against her temple. In the dim, the mulberry diamond in the middle of her forehead stands out stark against her skin. “There’s supposed to be checks and balances, and if the Hokage is perceived as acting with impunity, there can be precedent to act outside of his or her orders.”

Naruto frowns, pinching his cheeks between thumb and forefingers, stretching the skin down to make a sunken, ugly face. “Less wordy, please Sakura-chan? Weak and hungry over here.” 

She sighs. “People think she’s biased and ignores rules and does whatever she wants, and that can lead to people taking power back.”

“ANBU are no joke, though. And if they’re always supposed to listen to the Hokage and they’re so strong, and then they turn on them, then who handles problems? A group that’s not on _anyone’s_ side? Like—”

“A police force?”

Sakura’s gaze drops to the dust as Naruto startles at Sasuke’s words. It’s a mark of their bond that Naruto doesn’t have an immediate, snarky retort, but looks to be in pain on his behalf, the pain that Sasuke doesn’t let surface in his expression. Eyes cold, clinical. 

“For a long time, there was one. The buffer between the government running the village operations and those carrying out, ideally, neutral judgment on crimes. Good ideas, however,” Sasuke says, his voice dropping even deeper, darker, “always work better in discussion than they do in practice.” 

A long silence stretches; it seems endless. Sakura swallows hard, meeting Sasuke’s eyes. Blinks away a glossy swirling membrane that might just be the prologue of tears. He adjusts his gaze to somewhere just over her shoulder, raising his chin to hide his own.

Sakura breaks it. “No matter who the Hokage’s been, there’s always been resistance. Some villages are run with absolute power, but we try not to do that. It tends to look bad when you put down a resistance of your own people on your own soil, even — even if some think it’s the necessary thing.”

“So if we beat them up, we’re making it harder for granny Tsunade, and if we go after them first, we’re repeating all the messed up things that the Leaf village used to do.”

“That we sometimes still do. To clans, rebellions, factions. Assassinations in other villages.”

Naruto points a straight finger in the air ahead of him, and rotates it in a circle angrily, encompassing them within it.“But that isn’t _us_. We saved this village! We saved the entire world!”

“I know, Naruto,” she says heavily. Sasuke continues to look over her shoulder, and the only indication he’s still listening is the tightness of his jaw. “I know.”

“What’s the proof?” Jabs his finger into the palm of his other hand, demanding answers from no one. “What do they think we’ve done?”

“They could say any of us lied to protect one another. Something we left out in an interrogation. One of the deaths linked to us with planted evidence. A suspicion about a mission report.” 

“This is _shit._ ” Furious, he latches onto Sasuke’s sleeve, earning a bewildered raise of the eyebrows. “If they’re doing this to try to get rid of you—”

“At this point,” Sasuke says, “it’s about all of us. Who we are, what we are.”

“And all they need to do,” Sakura finishes, “is create doubt.”

Everything tips sideways, the universe threatening to let them tumble and slide off its face into the starving, consuming unknown. Naruto kicks angrily at the dust with his boot, groaning and muttering as if in argument with several selves. 

“Food, please?” Naruto begs. “We can’t make a plan on empty stomachs, at least I can’t.”

“How you can think about that right now is beyond me,” Sakura says.

“How can — oh, I get it.” Naruto rolls his eyes. Pouts a little and gives Sasuke a punch in the arm. “You two already ate without me.”

Sasuke punches him back, a thoughtless childish reflex, accompanied by a _shut up._

“After that, we go talk to granny Tsunade—“

“There’s no point in that,” Sasuke admonishes. “She's handed down the orders. It won’t change.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t figure out something ourselves!”

“You, wanting a plan.” Sasuke says it with a snort, possibly teasing. “Maybe you’re growing up, idiot.”

“I’m totally mature, I did save the world after all.”

“We should go,” Sakura says, insistent. Eyes anxious, dancing in the remnant lights of dusk. They both turn to look at her: Naruto noticing clearly, as if for the first time, how disheveled she looks. Sasuke, staring at her with an intensity and inscrutability that’s making his companion feel uncomfortable. 

“We can make plans when we know we’re not being watched.” Sounding closer to her usual self, she motions impatiently and turns to go.

Naruto could warn her, but he’s not sure what he’s seeing or feeling between them. 

Then it’s hot fingers on her wrist, holding her fast. She whirls around, temper flickering like a spark and perhaps not expecting to be facing Sasuke when she turns. 

“. . . Oh.” 

Tumbles off her lips in a faint flutter, a feather falling. When he steps closer, moving into her space, it’s always overwhelming; snatching the breath from her lungs and any protestations from the tip of her tongue. Melting, entangling, and any roots of reality catch fire, collapse as ash.

Naruto watches Sasuke lean in and whisper in her ear. He almost asks him if he’s all right, and it’s the third time that night a comment dies on the way to his mouth. But the aloof way Sasuke disregards anything beneath his interest when she’s in front him is a familiar kick in the heart to all the times his teammates, years ago, could say so many things without a single word. 

Naruto’s felt it, craved it — he knows how much it takes to command Uchiha Sasuke’s gaze.

She doesn’t expect him to be so close when her head whips around in surprise, or his mouth to be on hers. The mild curse spilling from her lips and into his, swept away by his tongue. The kiss absolutely lasts longer than an accident.

The taste of herself on her own lips, an indelible tang. 

A moment encased in time, metamorphosis ensconced in a glass paperweight.

The close to a conversation they never had. 

Naruto coughs, his turn to break the silence. “Whoa, whoa, okay, you guys just _do_ this now. In front of people.” For a second, he thinks Sakura’s crying — until he sees the glimmer in her eyes. 

She spins on her heel to hide her face and a muffled, wobbly, “Sasuke-kun.”

As always, the soft smirk never graces him for more than a handsome second. Fleeting and gone.

Sakura hurries down the street, kicking up dust with her heels. 

“You’re acting really weird, Sasuke.”

“Hmm.”

“What did you say to her?”

Silence.

“Oi, you too-cool-acting bastard, what did you say to her? I can’t tell if you just made her happy or upset.”

Briefly, Sasuke raises his eyes to the sky. “Nothing that concerns you.”

For once, Naruto doesn’t respond further, just bumps against him with his shoulder and waits for the inevitable push back. The space in which their arms belong, empty. They gently jostle, continuing to walk at a distance behind. 

The way pink strands bounce on her shoulders and the rich red hem twitches in the cool evening breeze. Swaying with a delicate lilt, the cadence and bounce to a melody in her bones that no one else can hear. 

If he wasn’t watching Sasuke’s eyes follow her movements, he would never believe it in a million years.

“She chased you for years. As long as I did, maybe even longer.”

Sasuke blinks, but his eyes are sable and sharp. Another pause unraveling between them in piles of abandoned strings.

“How does it feel to want someone so much . . . it hurts?”

Naruto doesn’t expect an answer. 

And from Sasuke, he’ll probably never receive one.

  
  
  
  



	2. Sei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spark in the instant they touch, an intensity they can never discipline, forever failing to subjugate it. The pad of her finger resting lightly on his, she frowns.
> 
> “If I stray,” he says quietly, “you break it.”

_“Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between a hunter and its prey.”_

❦

When he speaks first, his rich voice cutting through the low background hum and reaching her, she startles like a fawn.

“I need you to know something.”

Knowing he’s averse to vague concepts and words like _something_ gives her heartbeat a kick. Unusual for him. In the dim, with his hand wrapped around a mug of tea he isn’t touching and hair hiding his eyes, she tilts her head. Unable to place the tone.

They’re here after a long day. Him, of training, forcing himself back to where he should be, how he should perform. Her, running around a hospital she’s trying to whip into shape in less than a week, with a pulsing determination and anger that drives her. Sleep eludes them both.

This place is dim, perhaps enough out of the way, but all they feel when in public are the eyes of shadows. In a table wedged in a corner, they forget to eat and drink, lost.

“Yes?”

A beat. Another. She listens as he inhales long and slow, then lets it out in measured rhythm. Begins to speak, then stops again.

Waiting. She’s so curious and concerned and desperate not to scare him off from possibly opening up, she finds herself holding her breath.

People move around them in shadow, expressions and the details that define them washed away into the dark. It’s a place shinobi use to be shrouded in order to attain moving freely, wonderful contradictions. In the way of public figures, it only works if everything is avoidant and pretends.

It’s only now she realizes his reticence, how little he wants to tell her. Eyebrows furrowed, weighing his words and options. 

“You should know. You were not the first.”

Her mouth opens, expression nonplussed. He stares at the table. 

“Sometimes, that upsets people. If they don’t know all the details. So.”

Sakura’s chest shudders and he seems to recoil from whatever he anticipates – it tumbles out in a light laugh. 

“Oh wow,” she whispers, eyes dancing in the dim. Letting her chin fall into her palm as she leans on her elbow. “I had no idea.”

His frown makes her giggle, which she reflects might be a tad ungracious. He’s trying, after all. 

“I’m sorry. You usually aren’t that careful about someone’s feelings. I mean, I appreciate your effort,” she amends. “It’s unusually kind of you, Sasuke-kun.”

Caresses his name with her tongue with something like amusement; annoying and attractive all rolled into one. Eyes like beryl, like jewels, and the bloody glints in her ears, and the purple mark on her forehead; all of them sparkle and shine, coy. Like they’re in on it. 

“I also could have guessed. People have needs. And – you were gone for a long time.”

The catch reveals what she hasn’t said. What he hasn’t asked. 

Hypocritical as it is, he’s not ready to hear it.

“They meant nothing to me.”

In lieu of responding, she runs her fingernail along the lip of the mug with a reedy scrape. She knows it’s the unvarnished truth; she believes in his coldness, has been the recipient of his dismissive indifference. He’s precise in it, wields it unknowingly and acutely as a knife’s edge. 

“I know. Treating affection like a thing held at arms-length, with what you went through, makes sense.”

Always, she’s wonderful at saying prickly things in a smooth manner with no accusation, a talent of which he’s never quite found finesse. 

“I’m sure you’ve realized,” and the rest tumbles out like in quick, embarrassed words, a cut and sting, “that there have been men before you. And some of them, in that moment, well, they did mean something.”

Now it’s her turn to avert her gaze.. He knows she’s afraid of him looking at her differently, carrying some judgment of her behavior. For all the things she’s forgiven so many times over, it seems impossible that she would still think like this and find him seeking any moment in which to measure her poorly. Every day, he’s aware that she extends him grace and forgiveness the moment she opens her eyes to look at him. 

But does it hurt? Of course. It all could have been quite different. 

“I’m sure you could tell that, too.” It’s meant to be a joke, but her voice flickers out at the end into a whisper. 

The table is small. He feels her leg bouncing with nervous energy against his, spastic and anxious. There’s more. Perhaps the thing she dreams about, twists and fights her sheets about. Feeling that he doesn’t deserve to know what’s buried down so deep and that he’s not in a position to ask it of her.

“You should know something too, Sasuke-kun.” There’s a shift in her demeanor, heavy and somber. “And this may be a lot to ask of you, but it’s something only you can help me with.”

An electric feeling, numb and sweeping, as if she read his mind. He can absorb any pain she releases into the universe, bury it deep and protect her. It’s the least he can do; it’s what, he’s becoming convinced, he’s meant for.

They sit. Silence knitting itself around them in a protective chrysalis. A woman usually so forward and willing to rough someone up to punctuate a point, the greyed and foggy mirror of her gaze unsettles him, and he watches the pros and cons of revealing secrets. Possessing her secrets and fears provides a twisted closeness he finds himself obsessing over, and if all he can do is protect her and be a silent hero, even just in these dark tunnels, he could latch onto a sliver of redemption and burrow inside, make it home. Lines blurred between being the crux of her darkness and the only option to banish it.

“I need you to look at a memory. My memory.”

Chews her lips for a moment, eyes fierce. But he’s seen those eyes since childhood, watched them after telling her, spectacularly, to get lost, stop caring. Like his best friend, perhaps the only one that dares to take on the burden of his darkness, her plain and bright eyes are readable as open books. 

The weight of what she’s asking settles on him, heavy and cold. Realizes she’s been waiting for him to churn through the gravity of the ask. 

“Are you sure about that?”

Somehow he manages to sound arrogant, inflexible. Not a matter of ability but rather flinching from the scars of the things he’s done to her mind before. He’s not eager to run in the rivulets of the torment he’s wrought. Always, it’s been easier to push her away and keep her happy and distracted by the beautiful potentiality of a life without him.

“There was a mission, and it went poorly. Extremely. And — I wasn’t with my usual team. Some of the details . . . weren’t entered into any reports.”

She sinks into silence, eyes darting here and there. Marshalling thoughts into a gentle and tactful debouch, cognizant of surrounding ears.

“Turns out, many genjutsu users, as talented as they can be, still leave traces of what they’ve done, even scant ones. I let Ino try to root around first and find out if anything could be picked up from it.”

Again, silence knits itself between them. Sasuke hesitates, then yields to engage in a serious discussion.

“What did she find?”

“Nothing. My mind closed up, kicked her out. Barred the doors.”

Despite himself, he rifles through horrors, each more nauseating and angering than the last. And this is the precipice, the shadow he’s seen. The things she cries in her sleep about.

“No one, including her, has been in my head like that for years.” _Except you._

Leaning back simultaneously, supported by the backs of unfamiliar chairs, they assess one another with the gleaming tenacity of enemies. Or lovers. A stranger would frame them in opposition; a more apt one could see the ardent friction and obsession layered in between. Placing his hand on the underside of the table, she does so in kind. Fingers splayed against the wood with equidistant and gaping lacuna in between, the devastation and fraught nature of the request dancing like a tragic play. 

Always, he can say no.

“And if I say no, Sakura?”

A ripple sears through the skeleton of the table, dashing against the atoms of the wood and passing over him in the way of a breeze. Considering they’re in public, it’s a tap of admonishment that would never materialize in physicality. The delicate threat of her strength sends him into spins, and he considers crushing and kissing her in one fervent, primitive instant.

“I would kindly remind you,” she whispers, “that at least this time, I’m giving my consent.”

A sliver; a wound. Languid bleeding from a tear in the soul, and as the moment stretches without riposte, he wonders if it can kill him. If it would indulge him with a flash of mercy.

Poised and careful, her words linger on the tongue. “Also . . . I would say that there is no one else I trust.”

The fact that he’s her first choice and a default in one brings the old loathing back. Wishes she would hate him more and stop entrusting her mind, body, and soul to the black void he considers himself to be. Taking and consuming, rarely comforting.

“Sakura—”

“Sasuke-kun—”

“What will I see?”

Chews her lips again.

“A failed mission. Violence. A man under what I think is some type of genjutsu, and—” her fingernail digs into the table, splinters the wood, sending another wave throughout and the fear in her voice is another knife digging in, “what I think is him being forced to use one on me.”

An angry buzzing in his ears, an aviary suffocating with hornets. It occurs to him that this is why they’re here, because she correctly anticipates his reactions and moods and the oscillation between borderline mute and emotional intensity. Forgets in his fury how to breathe.

“Who is he?”

“He’s not important.”

Averts his gaze in an instant as his crimson eye blazes in the second between blinks. 

In an uncharacteristically quivering exhale, he nudges, then slips his finger underneath hers, closing the gap; held together by a single, physical point of contact. A spark in the instant they touch, an intensity they can never discipline, forever failing to subjugate it. The pad of her finger resting lightly on his, she frowns.

“If I stray,” he says quietly, “you break it.”

“I can’t— ”

Ever sharp, always in his rich, vain commands. “You will. This is not the same as the mind bending to the caster’s desire. This is exploratory, imperfect.” 

As one they lean forward, folding inward and wilting like well-loved fabrics. Unable to support even the facade of strength, lured in by a promise of a wellspring of understanding that could finally enable them to share the same skin.

His voice softens at the close. “Only you can guide me to what’s important.”

Pressing on his finger, pinning it to the underside of the table, she raises her eyes to his. 

It comes.

Versed in the usual intrusiveness of the Sharingan, her mind floats in the ether for a long moment, discomfited by the ease and warmth of it encasing her, familiar and buoying as a scalding bath. Existing without boundaries within her, rather than imposed.

She fades out for so long he wonders if she’s changed her mind. He can understand that. 

Abruptly, she begins. “The mission went wrong from the very beginning. It wasn’t Tsunade’s fault, or anyone else’s. I’m sure you know what that chaos feels like.”

A long, shuddering breath. Eyes unfocused. He wants to tell her to stop.

When she resumes, the flatness in her voice signals desperate detachment, an attempt to sever the past pain.

“I was the medic, and it was a team of four. I should have been leading – that was the first thing that went wrong. A young, hotshot Captain more concerned with glory than with the mission. Untouched by blood. Like we used to be. He felt crowded by me, the handpicked student of the Hokage.”

It’s difficult to hear her speak of the days when he’s not there. The more stories he hears, the more they gut him, tear at his insides as a writhing fish caught on hooks. Naruto and Kakashi are often missing from these stories as well, and he assumes that was the case this time.

“It all deteriorated quickly. I was there because it was supposed to be a prisoner handoff, and they may have needed medical attention. It was important they were alive. But . . . that prisoner didn’t come quietly. And the ambush, the double-crossing, came swift and fast.”

Her swallow is loud against the low murmur of the dark, meshing with her quiet words and dissipating into bustle. The bubble of the memory continuing to solidify and now sounds start creeping in: Iron and smoke, stinging the nose. Screams. 

Sasuke hears every word. 

“The intel was bad; we were in there blind. Then the explosions started. Smoke, screaming, chaos. The team wasn’t strong to begin with. We scattered. Someone took me off my feet and I went down hard. Struggled with an enemy for a while, handled him. And then I heard this awful scream.”

“I got his hand, tried to help him up. Thought I’d found someone and we could try to turn the tables. Not the captain, but one of them who at least was decent to me. But I realized, and he didn’t, that he had no—”

At this she pauses, mouth dry. Trying to find the thread. “There was nothing left of him. Nothing below the waist. Just blood and meat and organs. And they were falling out of him, he couldn’t feel any of it, All I could do was watch him try to stuff them back in, bleeding so much. So I—”

He knows. He wishes she wouldn’t say it, almost tells her not to. 

“So I took care of him. I had to keep moving, there was nothing I could do.” Still with the unsettling flat tone, but the crack in her voice tells him she doesn’t fully believe that.

“And then, I was out. Everything went black.”

Darkness blossoms, reaching into the corners and curves of his mind. The sensation of her unconsciousness and occupying it with her vibrates in his bones, ricocheting fierce and loud.

“When I come to, he’s dragging me.”

Sasuke shifts in discomfort. 

“By the hair.”

_Strands parting from her scalp, skin scraping on the dirt and leaving blood in the dust as she’s dragged backwards like a ragdoll. Everything’s fuzzy, reeks of burning flesh and the taste of iron claws at the back of her throat._

_Limbs weak and none of them seem to work, every joint and bone aching from the inside out. Grabs at the hand in her hair, trying to summon chakra to snap his flimsy wrist._

_Doesn’t work, nothing left._

_She slides under the veil of unconsciousness again, and when she comes to, it’s the face of her captain, edged and bloody and painted in fury._

_Someone’s alive. They can get back to the village._

_Instead she’s pressed against a tree trunk and his face is in her face and it’s so close, too close, and his hands are on her in a way that even in her exhaustion she knows is wrong, resists in a primitive terror, and she crushes her knees and thighs together and his fingers between them, harder, harder, until they’re dust and he’ll never hold a thing again and he’s screaming—_

_She tries to hit him in the face, but it comes out as a slap on his chin. Doesn’t know where her chakra’s gone, she’s not this weak._

_“What’s your problem?” she yells, hoping it shatters his eardrums, renders him senseless. “Where is everyone? And get—off— me!”_

“So he punched me. He punched me like he’d hit another man, like a brother who had betrayed him, like the world had betrayed him.”

Sasuke’s punched a man like that before. He floats into reality again, holding onto the memory with a runaway anger that feels years in the making. Something that’s never quite quieted down.

Now that she’s explaining it all to someone for the first time, including every morbid detail, she’s unable to stop.

“It was such intimate violence. Like it was easy for him; it felt so personal. Even though I didn’t know him well – and he didn’t know by then who _he_ was – I could see his mind laid bare.”

Sasuke isn’t moving. Isn’t breathing.

_His arm pressing across her neck, the other hand landing hard on her temple, a blow, another._

_Inhales desperately, spits right into his face._

_Wipes it out of his eyes; she lunges at him, struggling._

_“Please,” she tries to say. Tells herself to keep the wobbling out of her voice. The blankness of his eyes and his washed out pupils, the border between them and the iris nothing more than cloudy wisps, signals he’s gone. Possessed. Not the man captaining her team. “Don’t make me hurt you. I don’t want to do it.”_

_The way his head hangs on his neck is eerie, but the smirk’s not so unlike the arrogance he regarded her with when he was alive. She catches a ripple of it – her strength – and hangs on to it, because she may only have one good hit left._

_“Don’t,” she warns, slapping his hand away from her. “Don’t.”_

_She punches him in the chin. It has none of her strength behind it, but she’s waiting for the moment when she can connect, get in the perfect shot. And some part of her is hoping she won’t have to, that it’s the genjutsu, that he’ll somehow shake himself out of it._

_Forcing her hands together, she expels it in a mournful, desperate appeal. “Release!”_

_The way he looks at her and laughs makes every hair on her body prickle, cold sweat soaking her back._

_When he runs a kunai knife through her side without preamble, she almost doesn’t feel it in her numb disbelief._

She pauses again.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Again, her response is flat. “I need to know.”

_When she feels him, her strangled scream erupts from somewhere desperate and violent. She coughs underneath the forearm he’s using to crush her windpipe against the bark. Spits at him again, rabid._

_Finally her scrabbling hands land on his face._

_It comes. It’s a single, glorious second of power, and it’s all she needs. Fingers around his temples, she doesn’t hesitate._

_She jams her thumbs into his eyes. She crushes him beneath her fingers._

_His skull folds underneath her hands easily, falling apart like something shot through with crippling rust. He’s dead before he hits the ground._

_He might have whimpered._

_Pulling out the knife feels like freedom, divine release._

Sakura raises her eyes to his, trying to discern a reaction or even a fraction of what he’s thinking. Though she’s supposed to guide it all, now she finds herself wanting him to say something. Anything. The silence makes her shrink, wanting to sink and melt into nothing. 

“How did you get back?” 

She searches for the real question in his eyes. He seems to want to only know this, one genuine inquiry at a time. 

“Slowly. It took two days before I reached the gates. I healed on the way, when I could.”

It makes sense to him now, when her gaze disengages from the present and her soul seems to waft away, splitting seams from her body and trying to escape. Not unlike the way he feels when he thinks about his childhood, experiencing it in a different, separate place.

“The people at their posts, I saw the way they looked at me. They knew it was bad, even if— even if they didn’t know what. I said I’d only talk to the Hokage.”

_“We’ll dispatch ANBU to retrieve the bodies.” Tsunade says this more to herself than Shikamaru, whose eyes are on Sakura, sitting against the wall with her knees drawn to her chest. It pains and pinches the skin of her barely-healed flesh wound, but it’s fine. Means she’s alive._

_“Good luck finding them.”_

_Tsunade’s face softens. She kneels down, tries to look her in the eyes. Disconcerted at the flat pupils staring into nothing. “You need—”_

_“Don’t you tell me what I need.”_

_Shikamaru’s pulling a cigarette out of his front pocket; it’s not like him to smoke in the Hokage’s office, but if there’s a time for one, it’s now._

_At the click of the lighter, Sakura’s eyes squeeze tightly shut and then open again. “Can I have one?”_

_Shikamaru frowns, looks pained. Eyes on the bruises, the hollowed look in her eyes._

_Tsunade clicks her tongue in disapproval as he hands her one, and the furrow in her brow digs even deeper when he kneels to light it for her._

_“You need to get checked out. Whoever you want to do it, we’ll get. But it has to be done.”_

_She inhales, begins to cough. Clearly, it’s her first. As she does, the tears start coming; they’re not from the smoke in her eyes._

_“I need to handle this, before there are questions. I'll be back, all right?” Tsunade tries to sound soothing, but it’s rarely her strong suit. She gives Shikamaru a look, and leaves her own office._

_Sakura coughs again. “These are . . . not good.”_

_Shikamaru tries to lift the corners of his mouth into a smile._

_He sees her other hand closed around something tightly. Opening her fingers, she tips something onto the floor. A heavy metal sound and a keen ringing echoing on the wood. Unfazed, she takes another drag on the cigarette. Coughs._

_She stares at the ceiling, while he stares at the finger still sporting its owner’s ring._

_“She won’t find the rest of him.”_

He wonders how much more they can tolerate. Unbearable bruising and pain aching in bends and soft, intimate places difficult to understand or conceive — this is the burden of existing within the skin of another. A body broken. Wanting to relieve her of suffering and living in the slivers of seconds in between their heartbeats, overlaid and beating in the shadows of the other. Wishing he could sink into the memory, tell her what she thinks is happening, isn’t. Not that it would help her forget everything she felt and saw.

A twitch draws his attention, the notion of a struggle. The delicate tip of her finger, close to the snap.

_“We deeply apologize that we weren’t able to bring him back whole,” Tsunade says, voice soft and soothing. Sakura’s glazed green eyes flicker in irritation that she manages to hide, disguising it as a moment of emotion, a crack in a blank, respectful facade._

_Remains of hours spent sobbing still linger on the wife’s face. Puffy, scaly eyelids and the blotchiness, like paint, left in the wake of every stage of grief. Still, she maintains a stoic expression, humbled in the face of her Hokage._

_Sakura feels, rather than sees, Tsunade nod to her. Without pausing she flips her hand to uncurl her fingers and reveal the last thing left to the world of the living, the last thing to identify him by._

_Horror contorts the wife’s face. She’s destroyed in a moment, the shattering of a mirror. Sakura watches her process the death of the love of her life in the time between breaths._

_As her clammy fingers swipe the ring from Sakura’s palm, desperate, a sound twists from her throat, like choking._

_“And you — you were the last person to see him alive?”_

_Hesitant in the face of being addressed, she doesn’t answer, hoping Tsunade will say something authoritative, comforting, rescue her from the accusatory gaze that she cannot defend._

_“You were on that team with the Uzumaki kid. The last Uchiha, too.”_

_“I—”_

_“Troublemakers,” she interrupts, folding shaking arms across her chest. “Everyone knows about you.”_

_“Ma’am.” Tsunade’s voice is a warning, the type Sakura knows she only gives once._

_“Did my fiance die protecting_ you _?”_

_It comes out in a scream and sob of mirth, laughable and horrifying. Feels her head reeling and the ground coming up to meet her and nausea lapping in a wave at the back of her throat. A firm hand grips her upper arm—_

Sasuke coughs hard, swallowing and feeling something like a splinter, sharp and lodged in the soft folds of his throat. The nausea immediately recedes and there’s a shimmering at the edge of his gaze. 

He realizes a few seconds later that Sakura’s healing his finger, and he never felt the break.

She’s wan, the worn and gutted color of ashes from a fire spent. He feels as if he’s run miles and miles, and while the shared pain of the memory is fading, the prospect of the truth could keel him over. 

“I killed him for nothing, Sasuke-kun.”

“No.”

She raises her eyes to his.

The effort he invests to keep his voice level is palpable, barely restrained. “You tried to release him from it. There was nothing else that could have been done.”

“Ino gave me a physical, and he didn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter, Sakura.” Mean, always too mean when his intent is to make her understand. “He still beat the shit out of you. A danger to you and any other shinobi left alive; the genjutsu was extremely volatile. That man was being used by someone else, someone worse. He was controlled; that is true. But don’t,” he warns, voice a reedy hiss, “guilt yourself over a technicality.”

“It all felt real.” Her fingers slide over his, clammy and hot, and she brings both hands to the tabletop, pressing the tips of her fingernails into the wood. Easily splintering the wood apart with barely-contained anger. Sakura swallows hard, avoids his eyes. “So then, what _is_ the difference?”

Now his eyes flash and he glowers out at the rest of the bar, perhaps hoping someone stumbles into his line of sight just enough that he can justify a fight. 

“Where was Kakashi?”

“A mission. I didn’t tell him, either. He doesn’t know.”

The next question comes out in a vicious spit. “Where the fuck was Naruto?”

“Sasuke-kun.” The straining in her voice is awful, he hates it, like she’s on the verge of pleading or scolding and he knows it’s not about him, not one bit of it is, but the guilt threatens to drown him because he feels that somehow, if everything had fallen apart in just a slightly different way, none of it would have happened.

“Naruto was on a mission and . . . how could I possibly tell him this? He sees the world as it could be. As something good. And Kaka-sensei was away too and I just couldn’t — I didn’t tell anyone I didn’t have to. Because they would have given me so, so much pity. I couldn’t handle that.”

“It’s—”

“Please don’t say it. I know it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t tell you all about this for you to pity me. These are just the facts.”

In the echo of a memory from what seems like years ago, fuzzy at the edges, a waiter steps into their orbit at the lull and takes her request. Sasuke glances up at him, feeling prickly and strange. This is a place with very little light on purpose. Mutters words that are lost in the murmur of their surroundings. 

They don’t speak again. Everything that surfaces, dripping and stupid and close to his lips, seems so far from enough. The sound of the glass hitting the wood is the only thing that detracts. 

Again, the glitter of her eyes, earrings, jewel, all stark against her pale skin. Sipping at the drink. He can hear everything, feel her knees against his underneath the table. The only place their team can’t seem to find them. 

Faint smudges remain on the glass from where she sips, the imprint of her lips. 

With his thumb and index fingers, he turns it in a circle. Then, raises it to his own lips in the ghost of hers. Never breaking gaze. 

“I’m glad you killed him.”

His words are quiet as he slides it back across the wood:

“It’s a mercy I wouldn’t give.”

. 

. 

. 

It’s too much hope to believe she’s slipped into sleep.

With his arm draped over her, fingers splayed over her heart like he can cage it, tether her to reality, all he can do is hold her against him while she sobs. 

Curling around her like he can stitch it all closed, tuck her into a plane of existence that can’t be reached by the dark, the damaged, the damned. Glass in hard, rough hands. 

She places both of her hands over his, intertwining her thin, shaky fingers; he feels her chest swell and wither and at intervals, stuttering, gasping and groping for something level, an anchoring of ordinariness. 

The swift, searching looks of them all as he brought her over the threshold, supporting most of her weight. Naruto, predictably, leaping across the room with undisguised worry, and Ino trying to catch Sasuke’s eyes in such an aggressive manner he’s anxious she has an unassailable method to read his mind. 

Because no one believes that it’s just exhaustion or that any amount of drinking could render her this senseless. Sai’s face reflects the unabashed dubiety lurking in each and every one of them. 

“Please leave him alone,” she finally says. A rasp like skin scraping on stone. The way her fingers fist themselves into Sasuke’s shirt, though, actualizes the shared conspiracy. “I just want sleep.” 

A lie for the ages, for the books. 

Words bubble up: Over and over he’s confronted with the realization they’re simply feckless. Instead he buries the high bridge of his nose into her hair; long, wild, smelling of antiseptic glossed faintly over fruit.

He presses his nose and lips into the spaces between every vertebrae in her weary spine, a reminder to take another breath, that the earth can’t swallow her in its mass. 

And somehow they find the ragged edge of something akin to sleep, a fevered trance in retrograde. 

.

.

.

He awakens alone, in an instant. Always like coming up through water, shattering the glassy surface and desperately inhaling consciousness.

When he reaches the kitchen and sees Naruto sitting on the counter, swinging his heels against the wooden cabinets, each loud, punctuating sound another forcible reminder of his sunny optimism and childlike heart, and watches Sakura attempt to flip food over in a pan and, failing miserably, purse her lips into a pout - Sasuke has a loathsome and difficult time understanding what he brings to them, what role he possibly fulfills in their bonded, dysfunctional troika. 

Feeling his stare, she pivots from the stove. When she smiles, his heart and soul stutter to a halt.

“We’re going to starve on the road, Sasuke,” Naruto says seriously. “I’ll never make it if she cooks.” He yelps and dodges the dangerous arc of Sakura’s spatula. 

Sasuke finds himself in front of her; wonders how merely interacting with her can leave him forgetting everything existing outside of it. Gently taking the utensil from her hands, he indicates that he’ll finish. She hovers for a long moment, taken aback, then kisses him on the handsome edge of his jaw. 

“You know what else might kill me?” Naruto folds his arms, shaking his head with reverence in the manner of a wise sage. “How much you like each other.”

Sakura waves him out of her path to the table. “Quiet, you. Sit down. We have a lot to do.”

She moves forward, detaches from the past, one foot in front of the other. 

And in his love spun over the years and in the light of her endless grace, so must he. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote is again, beloved Ocean Vuong in "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous."
> 
> Also, the ending was tough on this because I definitely feel that this isn't something you move on from, but in the context of shinobi and the life they're living, it's not something they may handle necessarily well or in a modern way. Considering our girl ends up being a mental health pioneer, after all. This is more about both Sasuke and Sakura having a ton of muddy, complicated BS in their pasts and with one another.


	3. Cinque

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A soap opera is always better than a funeral march."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all aboard the Friend Ship  
> Sakura and Ino are my fav bests  
> suggestive languages and faint mentions of tough topics if you're concerned

_“The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.”_

❦

_Snip._

“What _are_ you going to do without me, Sakura?”

 _Snip_.

Ino can feel rather than see Sakura raise her eyebrows. In response, the latter brings the glass to her lips and tilts back her pastel head, undulating all of her friend’s careful layers. As water, disappearing and dissipating into a smooth curtain. 

“You just messed this all up. You’re hopeless as a girl.” Sakura erupts into giggles and swings a hand behind her — misses. Ino taps her sharply on the arm and then pries the glass from her hands. “And leave some for me, damn.”

“We don’t even know how long we’ll be gone,” Sakura says sadly, sighing. Ino’s just about to align Sakura’s straight layers again when she jumps back, waving the shears wildly away from the green eyes and red cheeks staring up at her. Leaning back on the stool, balanced on its back legs with her spine in a spectacular bend, which for lesser mortals would be an impossible feat. 

“You almost got cut. Sober up. Oh!” A clatter, and the scissors skitter away across the wood, which sends Sakura into another cacophony of tipsy, snorting giggles. “And yes, your chakra control is perfect, show off.” With a suggestive waggle of her blonde eyebrows, she adds, “I bet that’s useful.”

She misses, or ignores, the jibe. “I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry, thank you for the haircut,” Sakura says, stifling a hiccup. “Some things just fall by the wayside.”

Ino finally locates the scissors, and sways a little as she straightens up from the floor. “I get it. I mean, I know I’m not actually supposed to know any of these details, but I don’t know what Tsunade’s thinking.”

Here, they arrive. To the topics that are easier in a haze than in reality. Sakura’s silence lingers, giving Ino a chance to locate another stool. She settles in for the rest of her task.

“She’s the Hokage, and she always has her own plan.” Each word from Sakura is a sharp burst, like she’s trying to hold back before the village’s secrets trickle out and escape. “Even when I want to believe her, she has several ideas working at once, layers of subterfuge, things she refuses to share. Now that she can’t trust anyone else, it’s worse.”

“Don’t take it personally; this is sort of her job, after all.”

“She pulls rank when things get uncomfortable for her.” An irritated huff, and Ino can precisely imagine the pout on her face. She thinks on something she’s heard, that people who spend time together gradually take on one another’s characteristics and ultimately create their own charmed, ingroup language. Visualizing all three members of the most notorious team pouting with equal gusto gives her a laugh, spurred on by being decidedly un-sober. Sakura ignores her and continues. “And she uses her influence for evil — like making a betting ring!”

“Oh, you’ll just have to get over that, Sakura. We need some fun around here and you three, with your _renown_ and world-saving largesse, take up the lion’s share of the gossip circuit.”

“Glad it’s so fun and lucrative for you,” Sakura mutters savagely. 

“A soap opera’s always better than a funeral march. And if you were worried,” Ino sighs, tapping the crown of her head in a reminder to stay still, “I think she was very serious about her original proposal to you. Sounds like there’s some things that only your team can take care of first.”

“Sure, because no one else can.” Snorts, sounding resentful. Words thick like she has a cold.

Ino groans dramatically and tilts the glass back; the rest of the liquid trickles down her throat in a smooth burn. “Typical. You don’t even _get_ it. Even Naruto, for all his bragging, still manages to be fairly clueless about his own notoriety. The attention. The stories. Just people who saved the world, no big deal. And the worst part is, none of you even seem to like it! Take it into stride.”

“Speaking of Naruto—”

“I can’t believe it took you so long to ask me.”

“Well, we’ve all been quite busy, Pig—”

“Come on, I haven’t made one comment about your forehead—”

“Except five minutes ago—”

“It’s complicated.” Ino’s tone narrows the field, slightly resistant. “Probably shouldn’t have invited him into the crazy that Sai and I already have going on. Sai seemed fine afterward, but, well, you know how that stoic thing goes, seeing as you’re the keeper of your own maladjusted, handsome mess. I’m sure it’s relatable.”

“I haven’t been lucky enough to have my own _mé·nage à trois_ ,” Sakura says. An acerbic tone on its face, but with the hints of suggestiveness. “And the minute I’m somehow able to convince my somewhat-defined-lover on board, you’ll surely be the first to know.”

Ino clicks her tongue, reveling in her coarse hilarity. This is how she knows they will far outlive their husbands. “Really, I’m first choice? I’m flattered.”

“Hold on, you’re second. You and I very much share a type, here.”

“You can borrow mine,” Ino says triumphantly. “Does that make it fair? Will you stop worrying about Naruto’s love life then?”

Sakura’s silence stretches again, and for the first time Ino’s a little unsure of how she’ll respond. A quiet sigh. “Ino, he saw you and Shikamaru after that mission. It hurt him.”

“It’s not what he thinks,” Ino protests, waving the shears around aggressively. Her clenched jaw and narrowed eyes can’t be seen, though they are tightly-wound threads cut from similar cloths, best friends and rivals as long as anyone else. “I mean it. That thing from a long time ago, that blip, that’s not a thing anymore. It was once. We’re close friends. I trust him with my _life_. But he’s not the person meant to carry my heart like that.”

Sakura’s head tilts downward, and she grips the edges of the stool, knuckles turning bone-white. Stretches her long legs and crosses them at the ankle. “Do you think Naruto understands that?”

“Sakura.” Each syllable is a sharp tap. “Naruto needs to work this stuff out for himself. You want to protect him, but he’s not dumb. If he has something to ask, he’ll ask it. Shikamaru is very clearly with Temari, and he and I have nothing lingering. It’s possible to work past shit, you know. Food for thought. Speaking of protecting—”

“Spare me the lecture, I told him yesterday. And come on, Ino, don’t redirect. You think I didn’t know? I’m a medic for fuck’s sake. A pretty damn good one, I should add.”

“Oh my god, could your forehead get any bigger?”

“Shut it. But seriously.”

“Before I could even figure out what I wanted to do, it didn’t even matter. The worst part was, all it did was make it all more confusing. How could I have such a bond with someone, fight alongside them, and then figure out in the end that it wasn’t the type of love that made sense?”

The silence stretches; it seems as though tonight and perhaps lately, they’ve had so many. Rather than disconnect, a testament to how little they need to say to understand one another after so many years. The deepest intertwinings of friendship woven in the spaces in between. A bond that her teammates can never exactly replicate, never mold or seep into as a duplicate, a shade of something else. And in many ways, the most fraught and fragile, but always vital pieces of them are too dangerous, in their professions, to let free. 

“Ino.”

“It wasn’t documented,” Ino responds quietly. The words are almost lost in the sharp _snip_ of the shears, and pink strands flutter to the wood floor. “And anyway, it ended up taking care of itself. It’s better that those things aren’t on paper. The more that’s written, it’s just used as a weapon. You certainly know that.” Threading her fingers into Sakura’s locks, she shakes out loose strands. “Especially with you guys, now that you are who you are.”

Ino locates a mirror and pauses to top up their shared glass. Passing it back and forth like a ritual, the open mouth and well of dangerous secrets. Taking a quick, sloppy gulp, she hands Sakura both items. 

Sakura smiles wide, and it feathers the red across her cheeks. Ino’s glassy blue eyes, for a drunk moment, remind her of Naruto’s. Her chest burns like a soft pile of hay set to flames.

“What _would_ I do without you?” 

“More bad haircuts. Clownish makeup,” Ino says, sticking out her tongue and reaching for the glass in Sakura’s hand.

“Ouch, okay, I’m wounded.” 

Ino snorts almost at the same time she tries to take a sip. “Issnot like you need my help anymore. He’s falling in love now, and I’m sure it absolutely bothers him.”

Sakura swats at her, and Ino dances out of reach. They both take up sentry posts on opposite sides of the shop’s front counter, the glass with brown liquid set at equal distances between them, balanced on an invisible midpoint line. When they drink from the communal cup, it always ends up placed in the exact ring as before, soaking in the same dew.

Without warning, Ino reaches out to manipulate Sakura’s ear lobe between her fingers. Questioning wrinkles appear on Sakura's forehead. 

“These are gorgeous. Just like him. You’d never want for anything if you let him take care of you properly. You know, except the emotional stability.” Ino chuckles at her own witty quips. Wavering, Ino aims to jab a finger in her face in her way of making an important point — and accidentally pokes her hot cheek instead. Sakura slaps her away with a _hah!_ and Ino’s elbow slips on the smooth counter. Catching herself, they wheeze and struggle to be serious.

“Are you okay? I know I give you a lot of grief, but he’s being nice to you, right?”

“Yes,” Sakura says. Ino raises her eyebrows. “ _Yes.”_ This time with emphasis. “Better than nice.”

“Good. Plenty of people would line up to take a piece of him, whether in a good way or bad.” Sticks her tongue out again and snatches the glass from the middle before Sakura can get it. “Did he take you on a real date yet, not that sham of a lie you both attempted in the market? Did you forget who I am?”

“I told you, we were trying to—”

“Yes, shadows around every corner, you two trying to save the world.” Ino flutters her hands in faux hysterics. “What about you two? What's it like, when he’s just with you?”

Already pink, Sakura’s face flushes fully in the unusual heat of the evening. Chews her lips as she casts around for a sarcastic retort to put her off, but seems to make up her mind that it’s not worth deflecting. Ino’s eyes stay sharp, dancing as she waits for tidbits, though her own glow is due in large part to their libations. 

“It’s . . . intense. Every time, it’s like a fever dream. Almost like it’s not real. At least missions can be easy, in theory; you have an objective, you fulfill it, it’s usually clean. This — this untangling we’re doing, it’s so messy. Sometimes it’s difficult to have all of his attention. A man like this.”

“Oh no,” Ino says, mock horror playing at the edges of her words. Resting her chin in her hands, leaning over the counter, she looks away and flutters her eyelashes in the vein of a damsel. “He’s so sexy and protective and torn up about you. All the things you can’t stand.”

Sakura’s eyes cut askance. “Shut up.”

“You’re such a fixer. Your team is just one big pile of broken glass — yes, even your sensei,” she adds, cutting across any protests with her aggressive tone. “You sweep it up, cut yourself on the pieces. And that’s what you know. All of them are intense and messy and love to shake one another up just for fun. Then you went and channeled all your shit into gluing them back together, and you couldn’t just do it any old way: You had to be the best at it.”

Sakura gives up with the retorts, instead reaching for the bottle and funneling the remainder into their glass. “Whatever, Ino.”

“You know I’m right. And that’s what we do. We fix their broken bones and then we think we need to reach in and stitch the mess in their heads back together, and despite ourselves,” she finishes, tone triumphant, “we can’t stop doing it.”

Sakura sinks into another stretching silence, cloudy and grey; Ino, out of steam, stews in it with her. They let it linger, the easy and loose words that somehow are still undeniable facts of their lives. For all their banter, there’s always so much that isn't able to be said; stories that have only been whispered in ears and told in the glimpses they cherish.

Sakura mutters something, low and quiet. The whispers of flower petals speaking to one another in the shop muffle it.

“Hmm?”

“You have my operation plans? All of them?”

“Don’t talk about work right now, ugh.” Leans on her arm, rolls her eyes. 

“I’m serious.”

“Stop acting like you’re not coming back. You’re being weird.”

“There’s other paperwork in there too. It’s important it doesn’t get scooped up in the raid.”

“Sure, no pressure. I’ll run your hospital and hide your diary and do it all with grace and flawless skin.”

“It’s more of a ‘last wishes’ thing, but sure.”

Ino laughs weakly until she realizes it isn’t some sardonic joke. Sakura’s bright green eyes take on the sharpness she’s seen in those unexpected, pivotal moments; in the middle of the war, elbow-deep in a man near death, and in the fraught moments she faces the demons of the man she loves. 

Snatching her wrist, she hisses, “That’s not funny.” She already knows it isn’t.

Sakura flexes her hand, clenching and undulating her fingers. Would never raise her strength against her best friend in a thousand years, and lets her hold her. 

“What is this, Sakura, giving up?”

A pause. “Remember the palm reading? When we went on that girl’s trip to the seaside?”

Lets her go, fingers trailing off the tiny inclines of her knuckles. Sakura’s eyes flicker, blinking furiously. Seeing her look away, the past smoldering insecurity behind her eyes, sets off Ino’s temper in a spark. 

“You’re being fatalistic. You’re one of the best medics in the fucking world, and you’re here waxing poetic about an old woman’s predictions. Like, you still think about that? They do that stuff as parlor tricks for coins.”

Grumbling, Ino sweeps a hand across the shelf underneath the counter. Empty. She’ll surely endure silent judgment from the pale, stoic sentry with occasional sweet romantic quips that functions as her boyfriend _i_ _sh_ _;_ ranked number two, of course, right behind the lover- _of-sorts_ of her best friend, the sovereign reigning asshole Uchiha Sasuke. She remembers to ask for a broken bone tally from Naruto, because he’s soft and will never pass up a chance to make fun of his almost- _too-close_ best friend.

It occurs to her that these sarcastic ramblings and the pseudo-gossip-gambling might be the reason she receives so much judgment. Knowing in her heart that it’s all the key to living long and well, she can live with it.

“It won’t come true, Sakura. Get out of your own head and into someone else’s, like I do. Or get some, whatever you need to do.”

Sakura chokes on her ill-timed sip; more of it ends up on her face and the counter than in her throat. Forfeiting her dignity, she lays her face in the mess and groans. 

“You’re so easy to upset. So intense. Just like your teammates.”

“Fuck you.” Muffled against the counter, it's a comical attempt of aggression.

“Don’t be mad about getting laid. The rest of the world is patently jealous,” Ino says, letting the side of her face fall onto the cool counter. She hums like a satisfied, wild cat, content with a newfound cool and shady oasis. 

Sakura rests her forehead on her linked hands for a moment, then looks up at her through her freshly cut hair. She smirks. “You’re right.”

“I always am.” Ino preens, eyeing the inch or so left in the glass. 

Sakura’s hand is a blur as she snatches the glass; Ino moans in a sad serenade as she watches her stand up and open her throat to drink the rest. One satisfying swallow.

“You made me so thirsty just then.” Ino sighs and flicks a damp end of her companion’s pastel hair. “Bring me back a present from your trip.”

“I’ll try,” Sakura says. “Again, thank you for keeping some of my things while I’m gone. I don’t know what they’ll try to pick up.”

Ino grins. “That’s going to be great gossip on the street. Did you bring anything of Sasuke’s for me to stow away secretly? It would be the only gift he ever gave me.”

“Sorry to crush your dreams, but he really doesn’t have a lot of personal belongings.”

“Right, because he went from prison to your bed and never left.” Ino pulls herself to her feet, stifles a hiccup, and rubs her face. “Why are you making that face?”

Eyes nearly closed, only a glittering green aperture of iris. Exhaustion. “Was going to make a joke about baggage, but . . . I lost it.”

Ino stares at her, waiting for her to yield. Instead of using another one of her provocative or caustic remarks, she just waits. Soft sounds linger: Night cicadas, the wisp of a fan, and the gentle brushes of foliage and flowers wafting an evening song for the ages.

“Something’s going to go wrong,” she whispers.

A single drop beads up under her freshly trimmed hairline; Ino watches it cut a salty path down Sakura’s face and tumble into the slope of her eye.. In a different moment, it could be a tear. She refocuses, and feels the prickling of sweat on her hairline as well. Unexpected heat wave, unusual for the season. Sakura watches her in kind, and wonders if she’s seeing the ghosts of their choices in her eyes as well. 

“You don’t get to die,” Ino says. Simply, in a tone with no space for argument. “You have to come home and heal. Rebuild. Smell the flowers. Outdrink me.” Tosses her long blonde locks over her shoulder. “And there’s many more years of us bickering to come.”

Ino watches the emergence of a soft, embarrassed smile from the shy girl she befriended so many years ago. 

After a moment, Sakura flicks a bit of liquid toward her with a grin in the way of a retort.

Ino feels a buzzing in her skin, startling her marginally more sober. Stares past her to the front door, through the fresh ends of pink locks swaying gently as if to tantalize being so close, yet so far, from her shoulders. A knot finally releases, unfurls in her stomach as she recognizes the chakra signature, a welcome relief from the unusual, unfamiliar traces she’s felt in the village lately. She’s not one to admit being frightened, but if you were worried about the enemy shadows jostling for riposte, it was better to befriend the ones you already knew.

“Get out of your head, Sakura. And get pretty.” She points at the door, and a flirtatious smile winds its way onto her lips. “I think he’s here to walk you home.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter opener is qtd in "Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead" by Olga Tokarczuk
> 
> Ino is very truly my spirit animal


	4. Quattro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke confronts Kakashi. Kakashi just wants to protect his kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haruno Sakura is the glue of this team and you cannot convince me otherwise

_ “My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse: I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. Only that seems large enough to hold all of my rage and grief.” _

❦

Clairvoyance always presents itself with a glittering flair, but even Kakashi’s intelligence and experience isn’t necessary in the face of unfurling and angry Uchiha chakra. His former student, and a man mirroring the ugly outcomes of tormented childhoods, has a distinct energy with which he’s come to acquaint himself. He holds up a palm against Gai’s kind, familiar rambling and knows before Sasuke reaches the door that the conversation will have the affectation of control and the crushing fury he’s sensed in him since his genin days.

Perhaps it’s his destiny, to be hopelessly enmeshed with this particular brand of darkness. Or with his kids, failing to set smart and reasonable boundaries. 

“Oh dear,” Gai says, low and sad. Even in his endearing obliviousness, he’s used to Kakashi’s kids tumbling into his best friend’s moments of peace in a sweet and selfish blend.

They take ten seconds in the sun, lounging like languid cats. Each in a chair facing opposite, framed in the view of the wide window, they feel the weight of age. 

When the door swings open with so much force that it bounces back, Kakashi lets the wave wash over him. He’s felt it often, absorbed anger from others in spades. Doesn’t move to acknowledge Sasuke, instead lets him stand there in some righteous fury for a moment. Waits. He’ll spill over in another few heartbeats.

“You.”

“Me,” he replies. The tone mocking or cheerful; Kakashi’s vague neutrality always scrapes like sandpaper. “You really do have a flair for the dramatic.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear him. Gai quietly redirects his chair and places his hands on the wheels. “Well. I’ll leave you and young Sasuke to it.”

Gai gives him a decent berth, can feel the heat from Sasuke unwinding in waves. When the door, finally, it seems, clicks shut, Kakashi stares straight ahead at the wall and waits for him to come.

“Why?”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Sasuke.”

“Is this fucking funny to you?” 

Kakashi knows his Sharingan is activated, can sense rather than see two different eyes alight in a frenzy. In the face of it, he cultivates the essence of glass, water without movement. A calm that can imbibe his anger.

“No,” he responds quietly. “I don’t think it is. But you will need to use your words.”

“I’m not a child.” Comes out like a spit, a slap. That part of him that’s hard to touch, his indignant pride and arrogance, what makes him the product of his clan and what makes Kakashi want to shake him, and tell him to shed it. He knows what names are like, and how much more complicated they are than indicators or labels. They imbue a sort of mythology that can be inescapable. 

“You’re welcome to sit.”

“Why didn’t you protect her?” he demands sharply, resuming a conversation they haven’t had. Or in another view, one they’ve been having forever. “It’s bad enough Naruto, that idiot, left and wandered all over fucking creation, but you — where were you?”

“Not to be, ah, indelicate, but you’re the one who left, and did so with the intention of severing everything.”

“We’re not talking about me.” Looks at the floor, askance. Fingers of his hand curled into a fist, forming divots in his own skin. The words come out in sharp bursts, a burden and a dark confession. “That’s a decision I’ll be grappling with the rest— of my  _ wretched _ —life.”

A moment stretches, bleeds into several. As the colors of sunset deepen in hue, his skin is paling. Kakashi finally looks at him, and Sasuke’s choice of words captures his expression accurately, with deep, dark undereye circles like bruises and the murky look of his gaze. Sinking into another place.

“Sit.”

“Why didn’t you protect her?” he repeats. Now it comes out strained. “Why didn’t Naruto? Why didn’t anyone? No one ever put her off the idea of coming after me. No one ever kept an eye on her. Put her out on these dangerous missions and reconnaissance and— ”

“If she heard you saying any of this, she would break another one of your bones,” Kakashi chuckles. “She’s not weak.”

“You think I don’t know that?” And here Sasuke scoffs, offended on her behalf. “She led her own teams, fought for her life; there’s a lot in the archives to read when you’re on house arrest. The Akatsuki. But there are details that don't get recorded, Kakashi, things they cover up. Any idiot,” he glowers at him, eyes flashing, “can see the gaps. But it’s not as if that’s unusual for the people that run this village, pretending to tie our history up neatly.”

Kakashi’s gut twinges, a visceral response. His marrow knows what his mind buries deep.

“My guess is she’s only told me what she thinks I’ll tolerate. So she’s probably told Naruto none of it; she would feel too bad. You, well, that’s what I’m here to figure out. Because you’re annoyingly intelligent and she wouldn’t want to worry you, but you tend to have your ear to the ground.”

Standing above his former sensei, staring down at his messy gray hair. The atmosphere is thick and viscous, and the unsaid horrors feel slimy and seeping.

He tries; it fails. “I understand—”

“No you fucking don’t.”

“She is still a shinobi,” he asserts. “She’s had to go through more difficult, terrifying missions than loving you.”

“I’m asking  _ why, _ for all the classified, dangerous work she’s done for this village, one that she’s given nothing but loyalty to, she was put on a mission like that and ended up alone. She knew none of the shinobi she was with. She had more experience than all the trash she had to drag with her on that sorry excuse for a mission. They let her down!”

A quiet sound comes from the cushion as Sasuke drops into the chair across, almost dazed. Like he forgets where he is, lost in numb anger.

The tiniest break in his voice, and the guilt is acute. “It never occured to me that you two would shirk even that, that . . . you would let her end up alone.”

Kakashi’s elbows are on his knees, fingers steepled. He’s not able to pretend it’s unexpected or unjustified. Because it touches on the things he’s failed, and Sasuke, deep down, is devastated by his loss of faith. If nothing else, people like them have a terrifying way to bring out the most loathsome traits in one another and lay them bare.

Kakashi’s sigh sounds so long, like it’s encompassing all their years apart. 

“After you left, I kept up a facade,” he begins. The tone and the lines in his face age him by years. “I failed my squad, for a second time in my life, and I failed you. I let you go, Sasuke. And it broke those two, for a while. A long time, and it hung onto me like a weight.”

The sun, it sinks. Extinguishing the light in a lackadaisical, derisive way.

“I pulled away from them because it was clear they needed guidance beyond what I could give, and duty, the village, demanded me too. Naruto is unique, and needed to protect himself from the Akatsuki, as you know, and she . . . the truth was, I couldn’t look her in the eyes after reassuring her that it was all going to be okay. I let her flit into the wind and find her own way. I avoided her, left her up to chance.”

Sasuke knows he means it, the apology in his words. Both of them stare at the floor at evasive angles, the invisible gaze drawn by the eyes passing one another in the space as ghosts. If they connect, a teacher will see the student he could not redirect; he will see the child he could not save. A man will see the scrap of the relationship he’s not sure if he can mend. The disappointment in both.

“And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret that neglect, and thank whatever circumstances made sure she ended up as strong as she is now.” Another pause. 

Sasuke recoils when Kakashi’s hand lands on his knee, but after a moment lets the heat hold him, lets it skitter across the surface of his skin in tentative comfort. A sigh escapes the man across from him, and their bones, in tandem, feel the unbearable heaviness of being.

His voice is an octave quieter, and they finally meet each other’s eyes. “I know now that force was her will. You, and I — we were cowards when we turned our eyes away. I know that’s why you’re here, right now, angry with me.”

Sasuke feels impotent, weak. Hates the kindness he’s being shown and how reasonable the words are, in the end. His hand grabbing Kakashi by his flak jacket’s collar only surprises himself; his sensei still appears flat, unflappable. “Don’t distract me, or patronize me. Someone could have stopped what happened to her.”

The pain in Kakashi’s face is almost too much, too pitying to endure. “Could anyone have stopped what happened to you?”

A sharp sound, a grimace of pain or a strangled knot of air in the throat. Sasuke’s grip tightens and Kakashi’s body vibrates with him and they’re attached, the tensest string. Holding onto the only wispy specter that comes even close to an adult figure in his tormented years. Shadows on shadows; fragile supports.

“I don’t care about myself,” Sasuke hisses. “But she didn’t deserve any of it.”

“No,” he agrees. “I truly don’t know the details, but I assume they weren’t fit for a report. That’s been happening for longer than you’ve been alive. And none of you deserved any of the horrors you ended up enduring in the course of protecting our home.”

“Protecting,” Sasuke sneers. “That word again. Call it what it is, Kakashi: We’re tools. I can’t believe you— ”

“If you think,” Kakashi says, “that you’re the only shinobi who has ever questioned this, all of this, the only one who has ever lain awake at night and tugged at the strings that bind us to this violent way of life, you’re not half as intelligent as I thought you were.”

“If I was there — if I knew— ”

Sasuke sinks into fuming silence, the hiss of an endlessly burning wick. 

“She’s always been loyal.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer, unsure if he’s referring to her relationship to Konoha, to him, to the whole grand web, the design of the blinkered and brilliant military system. Could be an interweaving of all of it. 

Sasuke lets go of him, rubbing his knuckles against his forehead. “They couldn’t even return the favor; they never do. What if she’d been left for dead?”

Spiraling, unanswered silence. Perhaps Kakashi has run out of real answers. 

Sasuke instead presses the heel of his hand over his eye, his bloodred Sharingan, so hard it could burst. “I’m always angry. Even when I shouldn’t be. Even when nothing is wrong.” Lines fold themselves into his forehead, deep etches of fury and pain. “And every time she tells me more, shows me how she’s been hurt, I want to ruin something else to make it right. Burn it all down.”

Kakashi simply sighs. This, sadly, is a topic that deserves its own academy class. “When you’re young, the anger burns white-hot. As you age, well, it cools. It seems so useful and righteous right now; I’ve been there, Sasuke,” he says, deliberately. Another long breath skitters through his teeth and a lopsided smile finds its way on his face. 

Sasuke’s temper doesn’t budge. “Is this a way to justify being a sycophant? A yes-man?”

“Don’t project,” he gently rebukes. “Many of us have regretted what we’ve participated in, just like you. I continue to do so, every day of my life.”

For once, Sasuke has the grace to mutter something like an apology, so quiet and moving his lips so little it would hardly hold up in any authoritative sense. Kakashi still hears it, and he’s surprised. A proud man succumbing to faults and in his fashion, trying to correct it all swiftly. Now, he imagines, he has a distinct motivation for doing so. 

Tapping his elbow against Sasuke’s arm, his voice picks up in a jovial tone: “The passion, the capacity to love, is the other side of this difficult coin, one that clarifies and purifies everything in its best moments.” 

Sasuke immediately averts his eyes in embarrassment. 

“And while you’ve walked a road that many haven’t, will never, all of you will have to figure out what your philosophy is, what loyalty and a village mean to you.”

“If I know anything,” Sasuke says, an angry shake in his voice, “it’s that the state is only loyal to its own power — to itself.”

Kakashi sinks into silence, but Sasuke can feel words behind his lips that he wants to let free. Always cautious and cognizant of the listening walls, he has several false starts before he speaks again. 

“She’s had to survive in this system, and so have you, albeit in different ways. And your lives have probably unfolded in ways none of you expected. I think you should give her the same consideration.”

When Sasuke stares at him, Kakashi sees the shadow of the child he was. “But how deep does this all go?”

“She may not want to tell you everything right now. Be prepared for that. Remember that you likely haven’t told her all of it, either. For now, you’ll have to go forward together. All three of you, really.” 

“Are you giving me advice?” Sasuke snorts, rubbing his eye. Tired, puffy eyelids. Bloodshot. The signs of a lack of sleep and winding night walks and midnight paces across the floor. “Next you’ll tell me to talk to Naruto.”

“Actually— ”

“There are other limbs I’d rather give.”

Kakashi chuckles again, taking a chance on ruffling a grown man’s hair for old times sake. He receives a grunt though surprisingly, no retaliation.

Kakashi nods, and eases back into his seat with a quiet, resigned groan. They sit in the facsimile of the scene before he arrived — two figures framed by dusk, similar men who claw at the ragged edge of understanding. Reminiscing in the failures they lie at their precious people’s feet. 

When Sasuke breaks the silence after a while, he arrives with a different topic. “She was always able to spot it, understand the art of illusion. Genjutsu. Not perfect, but much better than most.”

He waits, giving Kakashi a chance to affirm. “Yes. That sharp mind of hers.”

“Did anyone ever make note of that? Did she?” A heavy, weighted pause. “Did you?”

“I’m . . . curious why you’re asking.”

Again, the haunted shadow of something beyond words. It makes Kakashi wonder how light on the horror these report narratives are, and also makes him realize that even among jounin, they rarely ever ask for the truth. It aches, that his children may have suffered repugnant, clandestine things of which he’ll never know the consequence.

Sasuke closes his eyes, seeming to settle on a decision of which his companion isn’t enlightened. As usual, he doesn’t deign to share it. With a new sense of clarity and direction, his anger keen and focused, he rises from the chair, preparing to leave. 

Kakashi grips his arm with a speed he’s never lost, holds him tightly.

“Sasuke.” Doesn’t let him stand, not yet. Stares at him with dark eyes and hopes he can always discern the warning underneath. “Give me some time.” 

Sasuke’s response of a dangling smirk causes him to shiver, an echo of the vestiges of his highborn clan and history. The curse, the pride and indefinable something that leads his teammates to love him, and one another, animals prophesied to chase their own tails in an unending narrative for the ages. 

“It’s fine, Kakashi.” Always addressing him in a straightforward, tactless manner. Sasuke shakes him off. “There are things that become our responsibility. You are at an age and status where this is beyond you.”

“You three can’t do this alone. No individual has ever changed the world on his or her own.”

Sasuke laughs harshly, dark. “You don’t believe that.”

“All of you need to do your assigned mission,” Kakashi responds. “Nothing more.” Eyes sharp like flint, and the intensity of their stares both could generate a spark. 

It could end in relief or it could end in blood.

“Maybe you’re depressed that you’re just going to be on the sidelines to watch.” His words cut deeply, ever rude, but Kakashi hears him saying  _ stand down; don’t die for this. For us. _

Sasuke pauses in the doorway, gripping the frame. Knuckles white. Kakashi stares at a spot between his shoulder blades, and in this way no one can see the softening of their gazes.

“Protect each other, Sasuke. This is how you heal. Naruto and Sakura . . . express so openly. It can be a weakness.” A pause, a sharp intake of breath. Why as he ages do things slip from his lips that shouldn’t even be voiced? 

Watching him over his shoulder, Sasuke’s eyes accuse him of the things he’ll never say out loud. “Maybe you do, too.” 

And though he knows that he  _ knows _ , it’s not judgment insomuch as a tacit, strained understanding that he chooses to release into the wild, a scrap of the past. The closest Sasuke can get to forgiveness, a consideration of all the grace they’ve given him in kind.

Dusk catches the brilliant, feral glitter of the Sharingan. 

“It’s our time now.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter opener is qtd in "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller. 
> 
> Sakura's men can't keep her name out they mouth
> 
> Dismantle the shinobi system


	5. Tre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every day, they get a little closer, entangle a little tighter; this what Sasuke has been afraid of all along.
> 
> The team tries to cope with uncertainty. Sasuke and Sakura succumb to the heat. Naruto makes Sasuke a promise.

_"Sometimes, when I’m careless, I believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, where have you been?”_

❦

Simmering in the unseasonable heat at the end of a long pier, the space between them and the air they’re existing in drips with humidity, laced with their usual, comfortable tension.

They always arrange themselves this way now, the cleaved ends of them protected in the middle. Shirtless and sweating, they bake in the sun in a long-suffering marathon as if seeing who will not only win the bout, but ultimately endure more. This, about them, doesn’t change. 

Sasuke’s leaning back on his arm, occasionally tossing his head to clear the damp ends of his dark hair out of his vision. It’s entirely too long now and his to handle, and perhaps it’s the unusual heat, but the narrow range which constrains his temper whittles down to the surface area of a matchbox. Here and there he dips his feet in to let the cool water take a circuitous loop through his blood and bring everything down, only to retreat in an irritated fashion, a fussy lion twitching away buzzing insects. 

In contrast, Naruto’s been fiddling with a kunai and polish for about twenty minutes before the knife leaps from his hand and lands heavily in the water with a _plunk._

“Stupid.”

Sasuke opens one eye, a gleaming black slit against the high noon sun. “You thought that would work?”

“Well I’d have another hand if you lent me yours, you bastard.”

Sasuke eyelid falls closed and he doesn’t respond. Naruto groans and lies flat on his back, his ocean eyes staring at the sun for just a little too long. 

“Ugh, what is this freaky summer heat? Just in time for us to leave!”

His companion doesn’t answer, not in the business, if he ever has been, of bestowing extra words or comforts. Though he has to agree; the warmth is unseasonable, unreasonable, and feels like some foreboding portent. Perhaps they’ve simply experienced too much, and signs in the clouds and around corners manifest as premonitions. 

“I just can’t get anything important done,” Naruto groans, rubbing his hands furiously through his hair. Also a little too long and shaggy, the routine aspects falling to the wayside. As he and the Hokage aren’t quite yet on speaking terms after what he considers to be going too far with Sakura, even under the guise of a _fake fight_ , Shikamaru was the unlucky recipient of the short straw to find him and pass on the aggressive message about finishing his final scraps of paperwork from so long ago that he tells him, with a shrug, to write down anything he wants. He echoes Tsunade’s _just get it done._

“Ultimately, we’re waiting,” Sasuke says, interrupting Naruto’s wandering thoughts. “To someone watching us, we’re unsettled by the stalking and feel trapped.”

“I’m not _scared_ ,” Naruto responds.

“No one said that except you.”

Frowning ugly, a deep pout; he sits up to knock his stump against Sasuke’s with the hard, heavy sound of flesh, and tumbles backward again to squint at the sky. “I’m excited. I’m ready to go on a real mission again, use my awesome jutsu arsenal — hey! We should all train and make some new team moves. Not boring ones like ‘attack pattern whatever.’ Something _cool._ ”

“We don’t know what we’ll be doing. Or finding.” Sasuke lets his arm slide across the wooden pier behind him, eventually lifting it to also lie on his back. Brows furrowed from the annoying damp ends of his hair. _This heat._

“And,” Naruto continues, ignoring what he likely perceives as mere negativity, “when we’re back, they should have what they need to grow back our arms!”

The wrinkles in Sasuke’s brow deepen and he throws his arm across his eyes to shade them. A gesture in show for the sun, but Naruto knows. 

“I don’t know why you’re such a stubborn ass about it.”

“Hmm.” Even in a single syllable, he manages to convey sarcasm and condescension in spades. As an anemic wind drifts by, failing to even stir the surface of the water, leaves tumble, the radiant spring shade of pea-shoot green drawing his gaze while he muses on their missing member. What she could be doing at this moment. It occurs to him she’s running late. 

“Sasuke,” he says seriously. Enough that he opens an eye from the safe shadow of his arm and gives him the marginal respect of looking at him. Finds him staring back. “Stop with this pen-tints.”

Sasuke narrows, then closes his eye. The potential for the caring moment fades. “Penintence. Who bought you the dictionary?”

“No one bought me a — ! Can’t a guy try to be a little more well-read?”

With a smirk, he imagines Sakura’s reaction to the pitiful attempts at sophistication. Finds a strange ache sitting in his chest at the thought of her, gentler and more delicate than the intensity he’s so used to managing.

It must be the heat.

“Trying to impress someone?”

Naruto’s mouth opens wide, though from his angle on his back, it droops to the side. “Since when do you care about that?”

“Tch. Forget it, then.” Knows his clipped impatience and bait is absolutely childish, but he would rather save the world again, sans an arm, than come right out and ask him what mistakes this idiot’s somehow been making with a woman who, according to the myriad stories Sakura’s whispered to him, breathlessly, has loved Naruto since childhood days and nearly died for him.

Well, she would have a softness for love stories of that sort; she was the spring beauty to a beast. If they’re ever forced to tally up her sacrifices, he fears the way the fates would lean on his scales in comparison.

“It’s complicated. And now I sound like _you_. Look, I’m not used to getting attention from a lot of women, okay? And it’s confusing and I dunno how to figure out who I like and sometimes it feels like all of them for different reasons, but all the feelings aren’t the same.”

Sasuke grunts, a lazy indicator to spur him on while his own mind wanders. Perhaps, like himself, Naruto isn’t ready to turn around and confront someone loving him in suspended judgment for so long. Another thought interrupts these — maybe she’s stuck in surgery. Leave it to the Hokage to have her running ragged so close to departure; lax on the vices and strict for the medicine. 

“And getting involved with Ino like that, okay, _really_ stupid of me and I get that now, but we’re still close friends and it’s just that, how am I supposed to pretend I didn’t do it or mean it? And she’s with Sai. Sort of, I think. I don’t know. See how confusing this all is?”

“And your other dates?”

“How did you even know about those? Oh — let me guess. Sakura-chan tells you all the details.”

Nodding blithely, Sasuke doesn’t bother denying it. He’s also watched her painstakingly create openings for Hinata and express incredible frustration when Naruto, in his endearing thickheadedness, manages to avoid it in any meaningful way. He wonders if she knows she’s possibly meddling, but also considers that it could end up worse without any intervention.

“Maybe I’m wrong, but a lot of those girls don’t know me. Not really. They’re nice and pretty. I get why they want to come around now. But it doesn’t sit right. So in that way, I sort of get what you went through when you were younger, and better-looking, you know? The attention.”

He digs the point home with a savage chuckle; Sasuke snatches a wafting leaf out of the air above him, striking fast. He manipulates it in his fingers as Naruto continues.

“So then I see other people around her all the time and I don’t know what to do, and I need to ask but I can’t.”

“She seems to want to spend time with you,” Sasuke says. Coughs. Throat dry from lack of contribution or use — or a distinct abundance of the opposite. “Say yes, or say no.”

Naruto pauses. “I think that _you_ think I’m talking about one girl, and I’m stuck on another one.”

“You’re being an idiot. One of them made it clear. If you don’t feel the same, don’t string her along. Waste of everyone’s time, in the end.”

“You’re an asshole and a hypocrite.”

Fashioned into a tightly-wound projectile, the leaf sharply pings off the middle of Naruto’s forehead, flicked from Sasuke’s fingers at lightning speed. Rubbing the reddened skin from its assault, he pouts. Snatching up a leaf of his own, he grumbles. “Well what do you think about her?”

“Who?”

“ . . . Hinata?”

Sasuke frowns, casting around for the image; long dark hair, pale eyes, quiet as a mouse. He’s more familiar with her late cousin than her, and can’t say he’s heard her say more than ten words in his presence. Between the two of them, who would even initiate a conversation? But he’s heard enough from Sakura, and he trusts her assessment; for him, that’s enough.

“Sakura thinks you should try. That you’ve been avoiding her.”

“Oh, _Sakura-chan_ says. Don’t you think I’ve heard plenty about it?”

“Well maybe,” Sasuke begins, his voice carrying an edge, “if you stopped asking _her_ on dates instead and getting concussed, maybe your head would be clearer. Idiot.”

Sasuke flinches as a rolled up leaf hits him directly in the cheek. Brushing it off, he can feel his jaw irrevocably clenched in irritation. Naruto’s smile is obnoxious and sly.

“I was wondering how long it’d take for that to start pissing you off,” Naruto teases. “It’s nice to see something bugs you, for once. Anyway, she’s late.”

Sasuke doesn’t deign to speak to him further, sinking into himself as a smoldering fire.

“What if I do that, and we take this chance? And I’m wrong? What if Hinata’s been loving the wrong person, or . . . I’m not who she thought I was?”

Sasuke doesn’t tell him what he wants to say, something he has no idea how to correctly express. That it could all be right; that in fact they could end up being happy, that they could have everything. 

Instead he imperceptibly shrugs, a gesture that after all these years is finally understood by Naruto as one he makes when he’s embarrassed. “What do I know about romance?”

They fall into an uneasy pause, still with the curves of them protected in the middle, the most delicate and vulnerable parts of them are caged with dangerous, prickly warning signs. Naruto’s heartbeat sounds loud echoing between the two; Sasuke’s known him long enough to detect his temper, however righteous and correct. 

“You’re such a bastard, you know. She’s loved you the moment she laid eyes on you. It must be nice to know what you want, and it’s all right there.”

Shading his eyes again, he doesn’t have any way to defend himself or his hypocrisy. 

“You have to be good to her.”

A string unraveling in his heart, catching and fraying on all the discomforts and mistakes piled up in the chambers. It’s a mark of the changes in the time since his return that he responds, quietly, “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s not good enough.” Naruto says this instantly, angrily. “You will be better; you have to do that for her. And me? I’ll get over it, whatever I still feel about Sakura. But let me tell you something.”

This time, Sasuke’s eyes snap open, sharp and glimmering in the gloom cast by his arm’s shadow. While he doesn’t face him, his gaze tunnels into something dark and self-loathing for miles and miles. Naruto fixes him with a furious, unyielding stare.

“Don’t you ever hurt her again. She gives you so much. Us. If she ever needs me, I will always pick her up, Sasuke, no matter when or where or why. But if the reason,” and here his voice cracks, fractures, “is because of you and your failure, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll break every bone the way I promised before, the way she loves you too much to do.”

And Sasuke believes every word, the intensity woven into beautiful knots of truth, the devotion he’s been given by him and received. With Naruto, love can come in the way of bruises and rambling sermons of justice and naiveté, and Sasuke knows what the other side of that looks like. The warning that he will unequivocally love his teammates to death. 

Sasuke’s vision goes glassy, and he blinks the temporary swirls away, still lost, staring at something so many miles away. 

Clearing his throat, he says, “Five.”

Naruto screws up his face in confusion. “What?”

“If it makes you feel better,” Sasuke sighs, “she’s broken five of my bones. All accidents, apparently.”

Naruto sits up abruptly, pounding a fist on his knee. Sasuke straightens up as well with a sigh. Squinting as if staring at a blackboard without glasses, Naruto mumbles to himself. When the realization washes over him, his eyes nearly burst the bounds of his eye sockets. 

“. . . Only five?!”

. 

. 

. 

As she approaches, she hears Naruto’s laughter echoing in happy peals over the low buzz of insects, summoned by the unusual heat. 

“So that’s what happened to your nose? Hah, pervert.” 

Raising her eyes to the sky, she feels dizzy as she loses herself in the vast, endless blue. Stretching her arms above her head, she feels knots loosen in her back, bubbling and bursting from her joints, and reflects she wouldn’t say no to a back massage. Being elbow-deep in a man’s chest for emergency surgery tends to leave some tension in the spine and neck, and also isn’t what she feels like doing 72 hours out from a state-sanctioned ambush of her home.

At the very least, her fresh haircut is a godsend in this heat, along with the brimmed beach hat, bathing suit, and cutoffs. As she lazily makes her way toward the familiar voices of her boys, she wonders if a red suit after all that she’s done today is some unconscious morbidity surfacing, if it reflects the turns her life’s taken. 

Today she finds it difficult to care, and smiles at her teammates’ bickering voices.

Holding onto the hat’s brim to keep it in place as she quickens her pace down the dirt path, following the dulcet tones of what’s probably a silly spat. When she reaches the wooden edge of the pier and sees each leaning back on their arm, the missing ones like a set of parentheses in between their bodies, she stays quiet for a moment. Finds herself passing the heel of her hand underneath her eye to sweep away an unexpected and tender moment of tears. 

“You both need a haircut,” is her manner of greeting, running a hand through her own and feathering it through. “I’ll have to send you to Ino.”

They both twist at the waist in response. Naruto clambers to his feet, unconsciously preening; he’s always unable to help it. Sasuke has the disproportionately reactionary urge to drown him in response, but feels vindicated when her bright green eyes turn on him first, lingering in the muscular lowlands of his chest. From anyone else, it would be irritating.

The fact that she’s currently held together by mere red strings is a distressing blend of infuriating and enticing. 

“Well, yours looks nice!” Naruto grins. “Great for the . . . weather.” Blushes, as if he’s met her for the first time and casting about for some safe and mundane topic.

She grins back. Glances at Sasuke again. “Sorry I’m late. Emergency surgery. Didn’t want to show up in a coat covered in patient.”

“Did he explode or somethin’?” 

“No, just quite a lot of blood.”

Now Naruto wrinkles his nose in response, and Sakura comes toward them at the end of the pier, breezes between the two of them, and sits with an air of reclaiming her spot. Dangles her feet in the water immediately, letting out a relaxed moan at the cool relief. 

“I can’t believe you guys aren’t in here. It’s so hot.” Leaning forward, she idly pulls her fingers through the crystal clear pond. The rounds of her bones surface underneath her skin as she stretches forward and then disappear as she leans back, hands on the hot pier wood. 

A single bead of sweat rests in the valley of her spine. Sasuke errantly feels that he could find a way to drown in it, if he tries. 

He’s staring, and Naruto is staring at him. 

“Kaka-sensei’s coming,” she adds. It seems she has zero idea, or blithely ignores, the intensity of his eyes on her back. “I met him on the way home. It’s probably the last time we’ll see him before we leave.”

“See who?” Kakashi asks. With a small finger salute, he greets them with a signature, “Yo.”

“Hey! How do you still have that on in this heat? Aren’t you dying?” Naruto pulls at his own cheeks, indicating Kakashi’s mask. 

“Ah, did you guys get a new teammate? Different hairstyle, the hat? Who could it be?” Sakura twists to look at him over her shoulder, a bit of a pout on her lips. He winks at her. 

“Don’t say that too close to me, Kaka-sensei. I’ll drown you.”

He chuckles, scratching his bare shoulder; in a sleeveless shirt and shoeless, gloveless, at least he’s shown a smidgen of vulnerability to the elements. Comes forward to ruffle the hair of his cranky kids, giving Sasuke an extra cheeky smile. Whether it’s a nod to their discussion or some borderline implication, Sasuke bites his tongue on the word _pervert_ but finds his eyes lingering on all her delicate pieces: The dotted rounds of her spinal column, the short, tousled hair, and the tangle of loosely knotted red strings, as a bow sits on a gift. 

He feels Kakashi’s eyes on him.

Naruto engages Kakashi with his ideas for the reformed Team Seven’s attack names with aggressive fervor. As he’s drawn into the mildly ridiculous discussion, Sakura pats her pockets and quietly curses. 

“I lost something. I must have dropped it on the path,” she says, getting to her feet. When she turns and comes face to face with Sasuke, she tilts her head. “Excuse me, Sasuke-kun.”

“What did you lose?” 

She pauses before answering, perhaps gauging his interest. “The notes I took after the surgery. I had them with me, but usually I have better pockets.” At this, she hooks her thumbs into the loops of the shorts and pulls the fabric away from her body, showcasing the apparent lack of space. Looking up at him through her pink, freshly-cut ends, under the brim of her white hat, her lips tug themselves into a sheepish smile. Could be the heat, the way red feathers across her nose and the high points of her cheeks. 

Sasuke’s smirk in response might cause nervous collapse, the way her knees feel weak, the way heat sweeps through her body and brushes her bones as a livewire, scattering sparks. 

A skip, and he short-circuits. 

Could be the way she brushes past him, all long legs and red strings and hot skin, and says, “You’re welcome to help me look.”

It doesn't give him any further pause. Follows behind her as she retraces her steps on the dirt path, something in the sway of her hips inviting him to come along.

Naruto sees Sasuke fall in line, and changes tack immediately when they’re out of earshot.

“Kaka-sensei, look what I’m dealing with here.” His tone is charmingly exasperated. 

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Kakashi responds, inspecting the back cover of his current read.

“Don’t make me say it!”

“Relax, they’ll be back. They both used to show up on time for missions, for the most part, and Sakura’s concerned about polite appearances. I’ll guess twelve minutes.”

Naruto’s mouth falls open. “Are you betting me?”

“I’ve learned my lesson with that. But guessing is still within the realm of good behavior.” 

Grumbling, Naruto folds his arms; Kakashi doesn’t need to understand every word of his cranky cursing and muttering to know what he’s complaining about.

“Ah, you all grow up, but in many ways you all act just like you did as kids.”

Indignant, Naruto furrows his brows in disbelieving disagreement. “This is _very_ different from when we were kids!”

Kakashi considers explaining, but figures they’re at the age to reflect and untangle it themselves. Instead he asks, “And how is your serial dating going?”

“Serial?”

“I thought you were working on the vocabulary. For the ladies, you know.”

Groaning in frustration, Naruto kicks at the wooden pier. “If I get one more dictionary joke, I’m gonna lose it.”

Tilting his head, searching to meet Naruto’s eyes, the mask on Kakashi’s face stretches in the way of revealing a grin. “Wasn’t there some girl who said she, I don’t know, loved you? Risked her life for you during a war, or something? How’s that going?”

“Kaka-sensei, you’re a total nosy gossip! You’re as bad as Ino!”

Stowing his book in his back pocket, he relents, palms facing up in the wake of Naruto’s embarrassment. “It’s hard not to hear. My kids are famous.”

Naruto blushes at the note of affection in Kakashi’s voice, dragging his toe over the uneven planks of the pier. Now Kakashi folds his arms, reflecting on the accusation of softness in older age — then remembers he’s only in his 30’s and chuckles softly. Blink and it’s a whirlwind, and the change in them has felt like a midday nap, a spell of exhaustion that he’s indulged only to reawaken in something in brand new color.

“You’ve taken chances on a lot of things. A lot of risky and very stupid things,” he says, lowering his head to try to look Naruto in the eyes. “What’s frightening about this one?”

An expression of consternation, complication. “It’s different. I don’t want to screw it up.”

Kakashi bends down to let the moment breathe, rolling up and cuffing his linen pants. He’s fairly sure he hasn’t worn these in quite some time; the unseasonable heat wave seems to be causing odd behaviors for all. Passes the back of his hand across his brow to sweep away sweat. “I would say that’s a good thing; it means you care about the feelings involved and the outcome. And that, frankly, is very mature of you.”

Naruto beams. Kakashi finds a nearby tree to take shade under, and takes out his book once more. Naruto runs to the end of the pier, splashing water on his face and body, cooling off like a wanton sea animal, and runs back to his former sensei to take up a spot near him on the ground. 

Spotting the book, Naruto starts to laugh. “One thing sure has changed . . . I didn’t think Sasuke liked anything, much less anything about girls. You know.” Waggling his eyebrows significantly, he conveys a topic well-known to his sensei with the subtlety of a hammer.

Kakashi chuckles again, but doesn’t stop reading. “That happens to most people, eventually.”

“You gotta think it’s as weird as I do!”

“Young men, whatever their preference, eventually reach this phase, yes. You have too. Quite normal.”

Looking away with his chin in the air in an attempt at dignity, or at least to elevate himself and his chivalry above his teammate’s, he mutters, “He was already halfway there when he saw her in that suit.”

“Ah, well. You would know something about having his attention.”

“. . . What?”

“And well, Sakura runs the entire village’s medical operation. Naruto, there are women lining up from every village to date you. Frankly, nothing surprises me in my old age.”

“Aww, you’re not ol— hey, what?”

“Anyway, I have a feeling it will all work out for you.”

“Well, thanks Kaka-sensei. Wait, you’ve never married, have you?” Crossing his legs and setting his chin in his hand, he leans in as if intent on forcing Kakashi to divulge a torrid secret. “What was _your_ longest relationship?” 

“Hmm. Depending on how you define that, it would probably be Gai.”

“ . . . _What_?”

It’s a little over twelve minutes later when Sasuke and Sakura reemerge from the tall grass fields and onto the dirt path. She yanks the brim of her sunhat over her flushed face and smiles at Sasuke from beneath. There’s a dust of red in his face, faint enough it could be blamed on the heat. Quickly, her hand pats at his hair to loosen pieces of golden grass. 

Naruto rolls his eyes with gusto and pouts at Kakashi, glowering. The latter shrugs and puts out his palm, pulling his fingers in the _pay up!_ motion. 

“My frog is in my other shorts,” he says, sticking out his tongue.

“You really need to open a bank account,” Kakashi admonishes as Sasuke and Sakura walk up.

“Where have you been keeping your money?” Sakura asks in exasperation. 

Kakashi looks up at Sakura, whose eyes are sage and glittering. “Seems like you found what you were looking for?”

Surveys him from above. In these moments, she’s an audacious daughter and brazen young woman and to him personally, on the delicate edge of something complicated he’ll never suss out, that he’ll take to the grave. 

Suppressing a giggle, she skips her way down the pier. 

Sasuke stares at the gentle valley between her shoulderblades, at the blooming tangle of red strings. Sunken in moments like these, he’s desperate to forget who he is, who they are. Kakashi closes his book with a sharp snap, watching him. Naruto jumps up and runs after Sakura, grinning like a maniac. 

Kakashi can feel that unspoken thing between the two as he did before. Whatever she does for souls like his, and he can see the weight of the legacies they both carry in their proud shoulders and straight spines. Emerging through the shadows as one man and clearing the way for another to rebuild: breathing life into a shadow.

“Love consumes differently, but nevertheless.” 

Sasuke ignores his obscure adage, trying to prolong the soft burn in his chest as long as he can before it dissipates. Before the lack of her leaves him cold. Perhaps one day it will always win, chasing away the edges of his brutal family name in a way that won’t feel so desperate. Walks his eyes down each part of her lovely spine; imagines her fingers twisted in his hair and sometimes on his neck, delicate and threatening, submerged in a strange serenity at the knowledge that she loves and heals men and if she ever needs to, can kill them with equal aptness. Feels like something in him is broken because it only makes sense when she’s near; it twists him into a frenzied fever and the resulting delirium, he welcomes as a friend. 

Kakashi seems like he wants to say more, but perhaps he’s simply run out of words or they’re unable to suffice, lacking adequacy. After all, they can be similar that way. 

What shakes Sasuke out of his reverie is watching Naruto and Sakura face off at the end of the pier, arms aloft and bodies in tense stances, low like animals lying in wait. They can’t quite hear the exchange, but there’s definitely teasing involved and judging by Sakura’s blush, there’s little guess as to what it’s about. The blond’s grin is stupid and bright, and he bends to fling water at her; it splashes her face.

Sputtering, her tone is threatening. “I saved a man today, and I can kill one, too.”

When he calls her bluff and does it again, in only the obnoxious way he can, Kakashi winces. Sasuke’s mouth flattens into a mild grimace. 

The sound of her arm slapping against his head rings, and suddenly she has him in a headlock, wrestling with him as he flails and writhes like a hooked eel. She tosses him easily but he yanks her by the arm and they crash in the water together, splashing and cursing and flinging garbled insults back and forth. 

Their teammates walk up to the edge and watch. Kakashi chuckles and Sasuke frowns as they continue squabbling, so reminiscent of missions long ago. The latter’s weight shifts back and forth, a physical manifestation of deliberation; then, he sighs in a familiar, enduring manner and with hardly a sound or disturbance crouches, then slides into the water easily with an inborn grace.

Kakashi muses on the ways they change and the malleable nature of stories and truths. There’s a reason, after all, that legends take on the characteristics of those fabled heroines, revenge-seekers, and heralded protagonists, whispering and decorating them into goddesses, sinners, and celebrities.

It’s difficult to remember the last time he’s seen them this way; as Sasuke approaches them, Sakura’s eyes light up, always adoring, and Naruto expresses surprise and tries to immediately drag him into the conversation. Sasuke seems to humor him for a moment, then disappears under the water, interrupting Naruto’s sentence.

A beat. “Good to know we still annoy him just like old times,” Naruto says, flicking a bit of water at Sakura. 

But her eyes snap wide open and her lips prepare to speak, and what comes out is the type of surprised screech reserved for giant insect sightings or the end of the world. Suddenly hoisted up and towering over Naruto, she regains her balance by clutching at the head between her thighs for balance.

The tangled knot of her suit mercifully holds, checked and rechecked not long ago by attentive fingers and teeth.

Face as vividly red as her top, Sakura’s spine curls into a perfect arc as she leans forward and hisses, “Sasuke-kun!”

Hand gripping her thigh, Sasuke raises an eyebrow at Naruto’s speechless face. “Always with that dumb face.” Tone shifting, he says, “Ah, Sakura.”

“Oh!” With a surprised hand still on her heart, clutching her careening pulse, her muscles undulate slightly as she readjusts on his shoulders. Clears her throat to distract from her muscular thighs parting to grace Sasuke with a little more room to breathe. His dark eyes possess some savage glitter, and he opens his mouth in the farce of a yawn; rolls his jaw side to side, working it until there’s a quiet snap as it settles back into place. 

Naruto feels his teammates bearing down on him, Sakura settling into her perch like a queen returned to her throne, and Sasuke smirking in a condescending way that’s so familiar, so close to normal that it’s easy to open his arms and take him in and feel that he’s home — as if he’s never left at all.

“I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve done _that._ ”

Sakura rolls her eyes and Sasuke, ignoring the bait completely, says to her, “You’d better beat him.”

Punches her fist into the opposite palm. “I hit way harder.”

“You’d better just chidori me now, ‘cause I’m gonna make jokes forever.”

“And you’d better square up,” Sakura responds.

Naruto starts waving both arms above his head frantically, beseeching Kakashi in desperation. Still a little thrown by his children acting like, well, exactly that, sinking into a nostalgic and tender place — 

“Kaka-sensei, I need your help!”

— and wondering as he has so often lately what they’ll look like as they emerge, what narratives of them will weave themselves into the history of the world, and ultimately who they’ll become.

Folding her arms across her chest, Sakura’s tone is so brazen Kakashi misses, with a pang, their genin days when they were such young, respectful children. “You’d better come help him, or he’ll be at the bottom of this lake.”

It’s ridiculous and he feels too old, too sad, too worried for them and for the state of the world, missing the sluggish rotation of an earth begging to catch up with the pace of a post-war age, the restoration and revolution of ideas of which he’s just a slip behind, only able to step into the imprints. But the sharp gleam in the young woman’s eyes and confident chin coax him through removing his shirt with a long-suffering sigh, and as his body arcs in a graceful dive and he takes that moment to himself before he’ll break through the surface, muses that she alone could take the world with her hands, if she had the desire. 

For now, though, she just encloses them around their hearts, always fierce and loving and unnervingly divine.

Naruto yelps as he’s hoisted up, splashing and flailing. He meets Sakura’s eyes with a flinch. 

Kakashi keeps his expression neutral as he faces Sasuke, whose eyes still glint with something intense, self-satisfied, the glimmers of a talent and a vice of many great men in one, whether pursuit in violence or passion — the chase. 

“Don’t worry, Sensei, you look great for your age,” Naruto quips, indicating Kakashi. 

Sakura giggles, and raises her fists.

They pretend they can love like this, clean and bright despite what coils around their necks and weighs on their shoulders. Nightmares a single, swift step away from the advent of gloom.

For an afternoon, they forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not saying you should read "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong *thank again for the quote
> 
> but I am saying perhaps you should
> 
> promise I'm still working on "Sirens" as well <3 have a good week


	6. Due

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke opens up, and Sakura holds on. Naruto makes a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Mentions / heavy implications of guilt/suicide, in case that's uncomfortable for ya'll

_“Love was a sweet interruption in the lonely march toward nonbeing.”_

❦

“It’s all so . . . dark.”

Sunders her heart, the confession of all his pain and loss. And she’s relived that moment he left her at least a thousand times over. Each retrospect writhing, contorting, details fading and blooming in cycles as they jostle to receive assiduity from the heart and mind.

It’s only, of course, in the shadowed opposite of a flickering street light that he dares to let a word escape.

Elbow on his knee and a hand over his face — a statue. Occupying the bench that remains a jagged fixture in the whirlwind span of her life up to this moment. There’s something poetic in there that she flicks away, forcing herself to focus. Even breathing would be a bad idea now; a misplaced word or look of pity can close him up in guilty chains, and he can be immovable that way. She needs a glimpse, and he needs to unravel.

“I can’t remember it all. How do I reconcile that it’s always been me, even when I try to hold onto it and it slips away?”

It’s a relief that he doesn’t want real answers to his gutting rhetorical questions, because she has none. How often do shinobi disengage from the horror at hand, bury the bodies and numbers and nightmares of the kills, arranging a smile on their face for the report, and indulge in a guilty sunrise? The minute pleasure in finding oneself mercifully alive? 

“Insane is a word that absolves me of it, which I can’t accept. When I think of it now, these were acts committed by someone that can’t reach the ‘after,’ where I am now. Like shedding a skin, I slough off the old, enraged person I was and start again.”

An involuntary shiver that she suppresses, anxious; the mention of skin and sloughing brings the image of snakes and slithering evil to the forefront. The person he _was_. 

“But thinking of that person as an old version of myself is incorrect.” He’s always precise, crisp in the analytical winding of his personal, guilty narrative. Never holds back on stating exactly what he is, correcting misconceptions to the tune of discovery as he goes. 

“I’ve done those things, and they don’t leave.”

He lapses into silence again against the backdrop of a murmuring, static hum, the hazy buzz of the streetlights. Sakura almost hesitates, but knows that small action will convey something to him in itself, so she grasps his leg. Fierce and deliberate. Squeezes. She wonders if he knows what this place means. It’s a part of their story and for so long it’s only been a constant conversation in her own mind, no partner with which to dance. Even together, skin on skin, his mind has sinister tunnels she can’t breach or accompany him in. 

“I’d descend in deeper, embracing the thought of being beyond redemption. Severed from you two, I could reject everything you tried to give and believe that it would never interfere with your lives later. It would all be easier.” And here his breath catches, a stitch in the chest as if there’s no way to get enough. Mired in thick mud, slipping into grey and velvety suffocation. Her fingers cling to the muscle in his thigh, grounding him to the moment. “Except both of you were always there, flanking the path like signposts. Leaving small supplications that tore at me as I crawled into the dark.”

The breath she’s holding on to is lurid, hot. When he finally speaks like this, of these fears, she’s loath to be the reason he stops sharing.

“There are memories that don’t even seem real. When I was first back, interrogated, it’s all in pieces. Naruto’s loud, stupid voice. You slipping in and out like a dream, a flash of light.”

She blinks tears away. _Like a ghost. Like a weakling._

“Telling it all to someone else was a relief. So was not having to think of what was next. Most nights, I wanted someone to let me slip into nothingness. It’s easier than guilt.”

Even when his voice is low, quiet, it has the sharpest edge.

“Death would have been a relief.”

A wounded sound in her throat, her fingers twitching. Refraining from throttling him, cracking his femur into dust in sheer anger, and she swallows every emotion wild and whole. 

“I thought of some angry, wronged shinobi – a patriot, someone avenging a friend’s death – coming in and stabbing me in the heart. In blind anger and emotion. The way I really acted, not the calculated emotion I thought I had been acting with. And—” He breaks off, swallowing hard; Sakura hears the lump in his throat, “—the guard lets him. And I’m fine with it. I would deserve it.” His heartbeat is furious, careening out of control. “I _wanted_ it.”

The streetlight buzz continues. Sakura has trouble tamping down her sobs, and they come out in ugly, breathless gasps. Leans against him, into the space where his arm used to be, hoping he won’t leave yet, won’t raise those walls and thread the ivy and leave her scrabbling on the outside. 

“When I wake up in the morning, every day, it feels like coming back from the dead. When I see you, and Naruto, I remember everything. The place between the nightmares and reality, and it’s a place I’ve spent a lot of time.” He feels the empty void of a limb lost, nerve signals trying to rewire in its absence, the space Sakura occupies against him; heartbeats in chests colliding in errant rhythms and seeking the level. “In there, between living and dying, the call of one over the other is so strong that there are times it’s an easy choice.”

She doesn’t ask him to elaborate; she knows.

“And now,” he says, voice fraying a little, a hoarseness creeping in that startles her, “there are two things that keep me together. Fighting is one of them. When I come to blows with Naruto, I feel normal and human again. Real. I have some purpose.” His hand falls from his face and lands on his knee, gripping it with white knuckles. Eyes fixed on a darkness she can’t see. 

Except now they’re on her – black like flint and purple glinting behind his hair. Expression softer than usual, but still tense and hesitant as if he’s waiting for her to run; stupid, really, since she’s been anticipating the same. He’s the shy one, not _her_. Perhaps it’s what he expects. It winds itself around her like a snake, tightening around her chest and narrowing her airways in the way of straightjackets, that it’s what he thinks he deserves.

And his fingers are in her jacket, pulling her and she lets him, the fringe of his hair brushing her forehead and there goes her heart, a rollercoaster off the tracks and slowly looping in an endless, gorgeous vacuity. Freedom falling. 

“You.” Against her lips, he forms the word. “You are the only thing that makes sense.”

Usually so insistent, the touch of their lips doesn’t make a sound, drowning in the flat buzz of electricity. Surrounding both of their words – her saying his name, and him saying _I’m sorry._ Bereft of their usual obsession, desperation; instead a tender understanding. One kiss, rather than the usual deluge, and he wishes he could sink into her and the love that makes so much sense would submerge him, coating everything with that sharp clarity. Salience. 

If only it could fix him. 

Holds her face, and the streetlight casts angled light on her and shrouds him, as it always has. Parts of her glittering: Eyes green, earrings bloody, the mark on her forehead darker in the dim, plum. His thumb rests on her lip; she trembles, places her fingers on his and threads them between. If they separate, they may not be able to stand up straight again in the face of what’s bearing down on them. 

“Every day,” she begins, “it will hurt. You see threats around corners, and feel like you can’t trust your own instinct and experience. Your foundation is shaken, and every friendly entreaty feels like pity.”

Sasuke’s eyes fall closed and he leans against their fingers. Like she’s lulling him to sleep with a quaint, adventurous tale.

“You breathe, and fight against the current even if no one can see what’s crushing you, and you’ll think you’re not strong enough to do it. And in some moments, yes – you’ll just want it all to stop.”

Her other hand finds his hair, pulling her fingers through it. Long. In need of trimming.

“But then the grief and paranoia go out to sea, pull out like the tide and leave you flattened, wrung out. It’s so bad, that first time. It’ll do it again, and again. The luxury of time will ease it, though; it’s the medicine pushed into your veins.”

He’s almost in her lap, grateful for the darkness. Some days, the attention of others and the eyes feel like knives on the skin, peeling and feathering his layers with the intent of eviscerating him for inspection.

“One day your head stays above water. You’re on shore, having normal interactions and moments, and it comes as a surprise that you can still do those things. Every day you’re further from it, until you wonder . . . how you ever were that person at all.”

The pads of his fingers slide from her face, linger on the ends of her hair. Freshly cut and the one thing that feels like any type of accomplishment after days of long shifts and nights of obsessive planning, spasmodic and intermittent sleep. Swirling around one another in exhaustion and reluctant, faint adherence to an overarching duty they’re having a hard time believing in. 

The night creeps, unforgiving. 

“Sakura-chan?”

They startle, pull back. Feeling caught and vulnerable. 

Sasuke’s hand drops and he can’t help sending a smoldering, rueful look at Naruto, whose grin even in the dark is incandescent. “Ew. You guys are _nauseating._ ”

“Oh, who taught you that word?” Sakura’s voice is teasing, but with a tight snap at the end. “Your dictionary?”

“I didn’t hear anything you were talking about,” he says, going around her jibe. “If you were worried.”

Framed under a streetlight, ocean eyes dazzling. They see his stance, weight shifting back and forth. Grin stretched a little like it’s difficult to hold, paperthin as a mask. Something in his face is anxious, and settles on all of them, unusual and stark. With one strap of a bag hanging off his back and hand shoved deep into his pocket, closed into a clammy fist, Sasuke and Sakura detangle themselves from one another and carefully approach: Each bond knitting back together, reformed in name but stilted in development, not unlike their genin days in which one of them would improve in leaps and bounds, leaving others to languish, a neverending orbit. 

Sakura’s voice floats to him, soft. “Naruto, are you okay?”

Blinks, nonplussed. “Of course, I just wanted to — I was heading to see — I —” He loses the thread of his words, blushing from the high points of his cheeks to the tips of his ears, a ruddy red stark against his blonde, shaggy hair. Also in sore need of a haircut. He cringes, caught in his embarrassment.

“It’s fine,” she says, smiling. Saving face. “Are you staying the night there?”

Still with wet hair from a hasty shower, ripped from the middle of one task and hastening toward another in his chaotic way. Licks his lips unconsciously. “I have to try. I have to _know_.”

Sasuke frowns in his haughty manner, eyes shifting between them to unravel the conversation he doesn’t feel like he’s part of. Sweeping his eyes from Naruto’s head to his toes until it settles on him in a comforting way, an understanding. His chuckle startles both of his teammates.

“You really _are_ an idiot. I told you the first time not to screw it up.” 

Now Sakura feels like the lost member, observing them picking up a conversation from a different time.

“I didn’t! Not really. I won’t.” In protest, Naruto puffs out his chest, not to be outdone. “It’s never too late, right?”

The corner of Sasuke’s mouth kicks up for a second. Then gone. Always the expressions that are hard to glimpse. “No. It’s not.”

“If you can somehow get a girl to love you, well — Oh, d’you have any instructions to pass on to her? Before we leave tomorrow?”

Sakura blinks as she realizes Naruto’s now speaking with her, shifting his train of thought. Coming forward, digging in the pockets of her coat and pants for the sealed note she had planned to send along. Sasuke frowns, realising that if she already wrote it, she must have already sussed it out that Naruto was ready to make some sort of choice. The complications of relationships come easy as she patiently untangles the knots. Her and Ino, he reflects, play protracted, convoluted games of chess, bonds instead of war games. 

Sakura’s eyes fall on her teammate’s zipper and with an impatient _tuh!_ she yanks it upward toward his collar, then flicks the scroll into his breast pocket with quick movements of her fingers. Pats it twice. 

“It’s chilly,” she says in her defense; the attention deepens Naruto’s blush. No matter how long it’s been since he’s breathed a word about his feelings, any moment in which she’s kind to him instead of them squabbling, fighting like young kids, is one he treasures. 

“Cold is nothing.” His tone is jovial, striving for upbeat. “We’ve been through worse, right?”

A quiet _oof_ of surprise and her arms are around him, squeezing perhaps a little too tight and he hopes his ribs will survive this time; he would prefer them intact for the thing he plans to do. Squirming in her embrace and putting a hand on the back of her head, he laughs. “It’s just a girl, not a battle. I’m not going to war, Sakura-chan.”

She lets go, huffs. Folds her arms and jerks her head a little to toss her new, short ends out of her face. 

If she only knew how complicated it was to still like her too. 

“Be serious about it. Love deserves it,” she chides, holding up her finger reminiscent of a scolding teacher. He chafes under the tone, but it so reminds him of _her,_ _them_ , of home — of camping in sleeping bags in the forest, knees and shoulders touching on a long wooden bench while shoving food into their gullets after hard training; walking dogs and catching cats and dictating briefings and lessons, boring him to death; her fingers stitching his skin back together twice, thrice, a million times over; the way her hair smells after she showers and the pain he’s felt in his chest because oh how he hates, _hates_ the sound of her tears. 

Instead he looks at Sasuke, trying to read whatever is lingering in the silence. To understand his best friend, he’s often stuck interpreting his eyes rather than listening to his words. Still, it’s a proud talent now, an innate thing he knows instinctively that he wears as another skin.

He can’t tell if Sasuke’s nudging him forward, but he chooses to believe it. 

“Anyway, see you tomorrow sometime! Some reports to catch up on too. Got one of those threaten-y messages about ‘being behind on my paperwork.’” Naruto outlines this in air quotes, words dripping in a mocking tone. Flashing a radiant grin, he rubs the back of his neck and turns to go. 

“Be careful.” She says this to his back but he’s already so many steps away, waving at them over his shoulder. Knowing that almost nothing in this world could hurt him, could even lay a single scratch, not unlike the man at her elbow. 

Too bad Naruto always gives people the chance to lay a punch on him if they want, taking them on the chin if it makes them feel better. Why he insists on being a receptacle for the world’s pain is beyond her, but then, is there any other way for him to be? 

They watch him depart into the evening, Sakura with a hopeful, small smile that whatever this is goes well, fulfills all the beautiful, loving things she wants for him —

and Sasuke noticing that Naruto’s eyes, _terrified, like something slips_ , _shatters,_ and his arms _or what’s left of them_ were shaking a little as she let him go.

.

.

.

Nightmares, as a shinobi, are something they embrace, expectant, as the missions fail harder and more often, as the deceptions become a familiar and occluding skin. As the numbers climb and the ways in which they can destroy and unravel one another flourish in their malevolence. 

Tonight, his happen to be worse.

Finds him gripping the window’s frame as if it’s the last thing he has, cracks radiating not unlike ice. Head bent and sweat beading through his skin. There’s a sixth sense they have about these things, the duty to hold another human being in need, and she can’t count the clammy hands she’s held through pain and drug hazes and dreams. Thinking of her teammate, her sensei, her best friend — Sasuke is her first and a staunch constant thereafter, her original introduction to love and fear.

“Sasuke-kun,” she whispers. She’s not quite sure if he can hear. Knowing how awful it is to be touched in this state, she remembers how long it’s taken them to be around one another without flinching. How long it takes to forget hands around your neck.

She slides out of bed soundlessly, hand outstretched.

The pads of her fingers land on his shoulder and he flinches, bringing him to the surface instantly. An unusually soft sound, a weak attempt at his usual dismissive syllable. Sounding so wounded that she slides her arms around him from behind, a mimeo of a gesture from the past. When her arms cross against his chest it traps their unruly heartbeats in the same terror, and both seek the level — seek home.

His swallow is loud in the quiet. Lets go of the window frame, clenching and unclenching his fingers. They shake slightly as he reaches back for her, the pads of his fingers soft against the crown of her head; she’s pressing her face against his shoulderblade, clutching him as if he’s about to fly away. 

“I’m fine,” he croaks. She ignores his blatant lie. Presses her lips along the muscle and sinew of his shoulder and lets out a held breath she was unaware of keeping. 

Untangling from him, she leans against the bed as he recomposes, turns around. He reflects on how cold he feels without her, on the crimes he would commit to always and forever remain intertwined with her in dangerous knots. Does she know that her eyes, blazing even in the dark, chase away all the things that claw and scrape at his stability? That being undone by her is the hope, the manner in which he hopes to leave this life, if he’s ever dared to hope for anything at all? 

“I imagine you don’t want to talk about it.”

A statement, hopeful at the end, but she always has the measure of him. He’s spoken so much today already, exhausting his emotional range. Eyes already tracing the column of her neck and sternum, ivory and profoundly visible, he instead settles his mouth into the hollow of her beautiful neck, climbing back into bed and lifting her with him easily.

Lying in the darkness he breathes against her, summoning gooseflesh on every part of her skin. A soft, fluttering _oh!_

“Why haven’t you slept?” he asks her collarbone.

“Don’t be silly.” She doesn’t deny.

He can feel the thousand yard stare, the mild but present tension in her limbs. In his way, he’ll simply have to make the silence just enough of a discomfort to prompt her confessions. 

“I would cry, sometimes,” she begins, voice small, “when you were in prison.”

Burrows deeper into her warmth, if only to avoid her eyes. 

“Even when I was having nightmares about you. Felt your hands on my neck. Shaking when I would come down to the cells. I still hated the thought of you being alone again, after being alone for so long already.” 

He remembers. How the first few times she would be curt even with the guards, which he could hear simply from her voice. Blindfolded and sealed eyes, after all. When he graduated from that after his teammate’s arguments about cruel and unusual punishment, she still couldn’t stand to look at him for a while thereafter. Her resistance to joining in with the guards’ quips and insults, however, gave him a flutter of hope that he absolutely did not deserve. Then the physicals, the first slip of her wrist that he also took into stride because that, she did deserve. Anger, sure, but in retrospect, terror at being so close and having to push that aside to do a job. 

They would take tiny steps toward one another, brush fingers through cold iron bars. Naruto always made himself known down there, loud and proud and critical of the conditions, and the two of them together were a blinding light. 

“And then the day you were cleared, it broke my heart to leave you then too.”

Imprisonment ends, house arrest begins. They can’t leave him, after he resists comfort in any way, pathetically convincing them he’s all right and explaining as he always does that it's his burden to bear, that his journey to atonement starts here. Alone.

So they had slept in a dusty front room in the abandoned, historically proud Uchiha compound against his wishes, listening to him toss and turn and grunt in pain and call out from nightmares. Sakura convinced Naruto she could handle it, and so she stays two more days. That’s all the time she needs to drag Sasuke back to her place, and then he returns only for items here and there, necessities and small items imbued with meaning to him that she’s unable to discern. So begins their domesticity, and Naruto hates living alone no matter what he says, so he’s always there too, especially now that his precious people have returned, battered and dysfunctional but gloriously _alive_. 

Here are her tears; at heart, she sheds them easily and openly for him, as she does for the three men she loves, and that love her in return in varying degrees of complicated decay. They hover on her eyelashes, poised for a fall. Still with the thousand-yard stare. Propping himself up on his only arm and brushing a thumb underneath her eyelid, his voice is still oddly strained when he says, “This apartment has space for several.”

She gulps, doesn’t answer immediately. 

“When Naruto left to train, I tried to take stock. New skills, new training, so I tried to make new friends. They knew who I was, the team I came from, but at first it was fun. It was nice to forget.”

Blinks. A few tears pool in the tiny dips under her eyes, rest there as still water in ponds. 

“Then you start surpassing them, and quickly I went from woefully average to tapping into things I never knew I had. I was always training, always working, focused on the main mission, in my mind. To bring you home.”

She laughs bitterly in the dark. “My own mother said she didn’t understand me. Or my strength. It became something that made me different from her, confusing. Eventually, my roommates felt the same. Some drop off, live easy. Settle down. Travel. But the catalyst was something invisible that always gave them pause. My connection with you two was just a bonus. And eventually,” she sighs, “it was easier just to be alone. I made great money for my age, Hokage’s apprentice and all.” 

The story lingers, drifts off without firm resolution. 

“I never wanted that for you.” Always sounds aggressive; he tries to soften his next words to something less of an accusation. “If I could have articulated it, back then, I’d have said I wanted you out of it, to go be happy.”

“I know. But if it hadn’t happened the way it did, perhaps I wouldn’t be this.” Raises her hands, staring at her palms. Soft to him always, clean and calloused for the medicine. Perhaps she sees blood on them, sees nightmarish designs when she closes her eyes, and maybe even when they’re not. He knows the same. It’s hard not to feel like the epoch of her life’s direction. As if she hears, she adds, “But for better or worse, these are my accumulated choices.”

He indicates her hands with his chin, and she frowns slightly, bringing one to him. He presses his lips against her palm, the catch of her calluses releasing the timbre and vibrations of something wistful, a song between only them.

Still against her skin: “I talked to Kakashi.”

“You yelled at him.”

Doesn’t respond immediately, no relinquished satisfaction of the correct answer. Lips still against her palm’s lifeline like nothing else tethers him to the earth’s axis. Heat flutters in her chest, pools slow and low in places he’s quite talented in pleasing, and to top it off it sears her cheeks in response to her wandering thoughts. Sometimes he has the most infuriating way of making her feel twelve again, some tender and bright mess of an excuse for a human being. Like a little girl. 

The way his eyes lose focus, though, brings her down to a simmer. Dark tunnels dripping in thought. Blinks once, languid, the second that affirms his decision.

“That will never happen to you again.”

Like an errant comment on the weather, if he was ever one to make pointless quips for the sake of conversation. The _what?_ dies on her lips as the synapses in her brain sparkle in recognizance.

“Please, I hope you’re not dwelling on that. It wasn’t why I told you.”

Shrugs, and it almost manages to channel the air of indifference he’s cultivated for so long, except now it’s so obviously a veneer of diffidence. The small things that gain clarity only when sifted through like sand. 

“You have the ability to push back. It’s interesting, considering the Sharingan.”

“And your fancy new eye,” she responds. “But I wouldn’t assume that means I’m good at anything.”

A pause. She can hear him thinking in the dark, pensive.

“You broke my finger.”

Frowning, though closer to an indignant pout, she says, “You suggested it.”

Lapsing into the quiet again. In the stretching silence, she turns her head to watch him like seeing him directly will grant her easier access to his fragmentary thoughts. 

So quiet, still with his lips moving against her lifeline at the close, almost like the words fail to manifest. _I’ll teach you._

In all the time she’s known him he’s been enconscened in some sort of shadow, and things take on a sense of unreality. And they interacted subtly, obliquely, unable to confront an unknown feeling in candid light — especially at that age, children in a death trap, in an age of war. Because the moments that they connect

_(and she remembers them, oh does she, waking up in cold sweats_

_because this isn’t you, this is a curse_

_because this isn’t you, you aren’t a criminal_

_because this is you, and it’s all you, and I love you anyway)_

are so apparent to everyone, a hurricane and the splitting of the atom, their tragic team and a story for the ages. 

Lately, gathered in the web of his full attention in a way that just about keeps her feet from touching the ground, she knows if he ever chose to leave of his own volition, or perhaps even not, if he succumbs to the things that make men less than gods, she will follow him or perish in one way or another. Perhaps it’s the same thing, painted in alternate colors.

“Sasuke-kun.”

The constant refrain, everything tied up in a single word. A shift in the energy between them, a sinking and a seeping and a plea and the relinquishing of any pretense. As his mouth moves from her lifeline to each of her fingers his hot breath brings every part of her to attention, a light rattling in her bones and a loving tension between her thighs. 

“Don’t ever leave us again,” she whispers. Bones of her knees pressing against one another until there’s an ache, like the one in her heart and all the other parts of her imploring to be touched. In a voice harder than she means, like an order, “Don’t leave _me_.” 

The things he’s always been loath to promise; after all, no one else will ever extend him forgiveness quite like this. A noise rumbles in his chest, the lingering beginning and epilogue of morbid amusement that never comes into being, then a dismissive sigh as if to regard the ask as frivolous and sweet. The only concern he has is her — because the missing unit of their dysfunctional triptych fails to do anything _but_ forgive him, but to her he will reiterate, illustrate, and ask repeatedly for her grace. 

Just as she’s about to say something else, her knees clamp together again in a quiet, plush vise as he takes one of her fingers into his mouth.

Her sharp inhale sounds loud in the gloom, and he tastes the tang of disinfectant dancing with the traces of everyday things she touches, the faint things he can’t remember. Salt. Warm skin. Indolent, selfish, and he gently takes in another, prompting a gentle moan unexpected and breathless which falls from her throat, an errant note of music in the dark. A nip at the skin of her knuckle, and she shudders. 

Another attempt to speak, something about him needing sleep — sighing, ignoring her concerns, his tongue savors the taste of her fingers and skin; but he forgets how strong she is when she wants to be and fails to prepare for it, so they tussle and twist until she emerges victorious, both breathing hard, straddling him and his arousal underneath her. Eyes alight. 

And still, he has her palm gripped in his hand. The fluids tingling, pricking in the air as it dries on her fingers. The energy of them coalesces, hums in a single, unearthly tone. 

He lets go, says,

“I’m here.”

Eyes jade and bright, her thighs grip him tighter as his fingers brush her lips, skitter over her sternum, and drag on the thin fabric as a vexing suggestion on his way down. 

When her nails spring into the muscular lowlands of his chest he grunts, breath catching; her apology is a wisp immediately lost to the moan that tumbles out instead. Tries to remind herself that she’s capable of breaking ribs, but they’re weak and stupid in lust and little does she know he would endure a thousand broken ones to keep her making music like this.

And the way he touches her always feels brand new — the bursting and brilliant phosphorescence of sublime and decaying stars. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please thank the book, "Man of My Time" by Dalia Sofer for the chapter opener. Fantastic novel.
> 
> Also maybe I'm feeling real soft and the world is on fire but thank YOU for anyone who takes the time to read my sad long and winding purple prose angsty mess. I'm working on finishing up Part 19 so I can turn my focus on "Sirens" for a while! You is awesome wonderful <3


	7. Uno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The curtain begins to lift on the rebellion; a village seeks to right previous wrongs. Team Seven enjoys their last moments before a fraught and orchestrated departure.

_“Dawn, I knew, would break like eggshells. But that was a long way off.”_

❦

Sasuke returns home expecting tension in the air, that tightly wound atmosphere to the prelude of a serious mission. Even chaos would be understandable, a familiar idiosyncrasy of their triumvirate; hassled, hurried, scattered by one to everything packed in place and reviewed thrice by another. Funny habits, since they had departed and returned from undercover escorts and surreptitious poisonings and grand war theatres equipped with so much less.

So when he opens the door to see his teammates sitting — barely, really, more like sunken against the couch, though not on the cushions but rather the floor, with linked arms and flushed faces and howling with laughter, he’s genuinely concerned about poison. Genjutsu.

When Naruto and Sakura spot him lingering over the threshold, taken aback, they look at each other and collapse into giggles. Naruto passes the back of his hand over his nose to hold whatever disgusting liquid leaks out. Glancing at the bottle of open sake swinging in Sakura’s free hand, realizing he probably snorted it from laughter, Sasuke considers closing the door and sleeping outside. 

“Sai said that about your d—”

“He alwaysss makesthose stupid jokes,” Naruto slurs, working his mouth to get it around the words. “But in _that_ situation and with Ino looking at me and we’re all—”

“I can imagine her face. Poor Naruto.” Free from the classic signs of drunken debauchery, Sakura grins at Sasuke. The pink in her cheeks and the overexaggerated scrunching of her face betray her, albeit working a better pace than their teammate. “We missed you, Sasuke-kun!” 

Sasuke shuts the door behind him, watching them closely. The burn in his chest is back, soft and unidentifiable. Naruto’s head drops onto Sakura’s shoulder and he frowns. She winks at Sasuke, correctly pinpointing a tinge of jealousy even in her haze. With both of them clad minimally, all mesh shirts and shorts and hot skin from the heat and the drink, his frown deepens.

Spots their bags against the wall in various states of packing, Sakura’s predictably neat and nearly complete, his own politely begun by her, and Naruto’s empty with most of the items stacked precariously beside, such a blatant reflection of his personality that it seems a fated, pointed joke. 

Naruto sits up abruptly, then places his sweaty hand on Sakura’s face with a wet slap. The latter furrows her brows and adopts a sincere and serious expression as he struggles to form words. “Sak’ra-chan, I have important question for you.”

She nods gravely. Sasuke contemplates the merits of inflicting bodily harm — _damn the fox._

“Have you an’ Ino . . .”

“What, kissed?”

Naruto yelps, conditioned for her to hit him, as if he had voiced it and not her. Removing his hand, she twists up her face in that grin that causes Sasuke’s ache to radiate a little deeper. Lowering her voice in indulgent conspiracy, she pauses with bated breath, and says, “You’re an idiot.”

Sasuke coughs. Naruto lets his head fall back in dramatics and sinks onto the cold wood floor. “Don’t be such a stuck-up bassard.”

“I hate to agree,” Sakura says, “but you do look pouty, Sasuke-kun.”

A flicker of irritation, and before he contemplates it with any semblance of logical thought, he disappears and quickly finds himself with a new bottle in his hand, procured from the kitchen, and returns to unceremoniously kick Naruto out of his spot on the floor. “Move.”

“Par-teee’s over, Dad’s home.” Sasuke wedges himself between them and shoulders Naruto aside.

Sasuke realizes how close he is to them now, settling into a bubble of their drunken heat. A sensation he could never say he hates, because something about it brings back a rush of mottled memories imposed over one another — sleeping out in the grass under the stars, kicking away Naruto’s wild limbs 

_and pink hair between his fingers, never tugging, just holding it in fascination because what a terrible camouflage color, as if she can help it_

and the way they were eating, always eating after long days and elbowing one another, squirming and never enough space and never enough touch among the three of them, hating and loving equally

_and he waited for Kakashi to say it was inappropriate but he never did_

and how sometimes they would listen to her explain the method of a jutsu or the effects of a poison, bookish beyond her years and fiercely analytical, Naruto sticking a finger in his ear and he himself bristling under her tutelage, annoyed at being even slightly impressed by this little spring girl because he’s an _Uchiha_

_and how they went through a nightmare together, her introduction to real evil, children in a true forest of terror, his hand over her mouth and fingers clutching hers and her screams_

_and how the first time he saw her after those years she’d become taller, dangerously strong, this lanky little girl turned something feminine, teammate to woman, and a loyalist and an enemy_

But right now their hot, sticky legs are on either side of him and pressing; he can feel the heat seeping and marrying the skin of his own. Naruto’s chin drops onto his shoulder as he reaches for the new bottle in Sasuke’s hand, and Sakura slaps him away and says it’s Sasuke-kun’s turn, he has to catch up. All of it feels like a possessive embrace and a crushing affection that perhaps one day he’ll absorb in full, letting it reach every shadowed corner of his insides. 

For now, he tilts his head back and drinks and doesn’t think about the logic of this, stress and trepidation giving way to exhaustion and succumbing to vice, with only a handful of free hours to go. The burn down causes everything to prickle, and he surfaces to feel Sakura’s dancing eyes on what he’s guessing is the apple of his throat. With Naruto’s chest pressing on his shoulder as he strains to reach the new bottle mingling with her hot breath so close, pebbled nipple pressing on his arm through the thin mesh functioning as her shirt, Sasuke swallows hard despite his empty mouth and throat.

He shrugs his shoulder toward his mouth, seeking the escaped drop; as her tongue comes up to greet it, painting a sinuous path from his throat and over the line of his jaw, it elicits a groan he immediately hates himself for releasing and Naruto finally succeeds in securing the prize.

“Yer a sucker,” Naruto says, taking a swig. Popping his lips off the top and smacking his lips, he grimaces. “Ew, this tastes like you.”

Sasuke feels oddly offended at the notion, and Sakura slides to the floor, flat on her back, gasping with laughter. “What’s that matter?” They both look at her in confusion. Giggling behind her hand, she clarifies. “After all, you’ve kissed before!”

In bits and pieces, they pack up the things that will sustain them on their journey, frittering away an hour, another. Ironic that with so much time to choose it proves to be difficult, hampered by a drunkenness that even their former sensei would judge. Naruto grumbles about Sakura’s apt metabolization and ends up handing her items here and there to pack for him, changing his mind about mundane aspects like colors and fit as if they’re attending a party rather than preparing for a mission like this. The basics are known: They’ll be receiving additional instructions at a distant checkpoint. 

It feels like a betrayal, a farce.

She asks Sasuke to check the jutsu protections on the apartment and then to check the locks, as if the latter can somehow function as a failsafe alone. Routine, comfortable habits to distract. She checks that the scrolls and books and notes littered around are not so important as to be revealing but reasonable enough to indicate they were caught unawares by their dispatch. Naruto wanders in and out of the kitchen and complains about food, and Sasuke, tongue loosened, complains about his complaining. 

Shakes her head as she finalizes her list of poisons, smiling and pink. 

Final touches are laid out next to each bag, the decorations for a vacation, not a mission. Clapping her hands together as a physical close to a job well done, she twitches the curtains closed on her way to the kitchen and her teammates hear the sound of clinking glass. 

Holding three more bottles in her arms, she sets them on the floor with a dull sound. Naruto pouts. “Isso unfair that you can drink this way.”

Shrugging, she crosses her legs and grins that stupidly bright grin again. As they take up places in a circle and claim one each, she says, “I won’t have them finishing off my stash on principle. Used to watch the squads do that after raids sometimes. Some are undisciplined, greedy, and will take anything not nailed down.” A shadow crosses her face, dark and then gone; an implication too serious for the current mood. She raises the bottle within their circle and waits, smiling over the momentary gloom.

The men oblige her: Naruto sparkling, ocean bright, and Sasuke with a smirk. Glass collides in an ardent and sloppy toast, the sound piercing and rich as the crackling of lightning. 

They exist in comfortable silence for a few minutes or so before Naruto, besotted and chatty, says, “So I have a confession to make.”

Sakura nods; Sasuke drops his bottle a little too loudly and then makes a mocking gesture with his hand, spurring him on. 

“I asked her to wait for me, and now I feel shitty. ‘Cause I feel like if I’m always running around saving the world, maybe her feelings will be different. And I’m keeping her waiting.”

“Oh, Naruto,” Sakura whines, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “You’re dumb. Women have been doing that for most of history.”

Sasuke continues the hand gestures, pink in the face and apparently not in the mood to form sentences. Pointing at her, he nods solemnly and tips his bottle all the way back.

With a soft expression, Naruto slaps his hand on her shoulder in return. “Yeah, you’re right! And she’s much gentler than you, so I’m not too worried about it.”

Sasuke’s contribution is a dismal snort.

Sakura frowns. “You always go right over that line, don’t you?”

“Wait, can you . . . ” and here he starts searching in his myriad pockets, scattering bent paper clips and dirt and suspicious wrappers and who knows what else until emerging with a four-folded worn note, scuffed with the detritus of his excavated belongings. Hands it to Sakura with the solemnity and reverence of a monk, and if he still possessed two he may have used a respectful gesture for the first time in his young life. She takes it gently.

Bows his head. “I need you to pack this in my bag. Somewhere I can find it but somewhere no one _else_ can find it. Safely. It’s super important,” he adds. 

The way his eyes shine, bright-set in the red and puffy eyelids of his drunk face, lends it credence. 

Sasuke rests his chin in his hand, elbow on his thigh. Seeming thoughtful. Another drunk snort of amusement. “You’re in love.”

Sakura tilts her head at him. “And you’re really drunk.”

“You are too, ya dumb jerk,” Naruto retorts. Sasuke simply shrugs his shoulders, blinking slow. 

“Which? Drunk or in love?” Sakura asks. 

“Sak’ra-chan.” Naruto actually gives her a look that asks, _are you dense?_ — ironic, all things considered. He changes tack and waves his hand in front of Sasuke’s drooping head instead. “C’mon. Jus’ get married; everyone knows.”

Another lolling roll of his shoulder, Sasuke nods with closed eyes. “Ah. If she’d have me.”

“Excuse me!”

Naruto beams in response to her sputtering outburst, the way she turns even pinker.

“Should get ‘im drunk more often, he’s funny this way.”

“Shouldn’t have done this,” Sasuke groans. In an uncharacteristic and sloppy movement, the support of his hand gives out and his chin slips, resting his entire face in it instead. Fingers splayed and he blinks hard to refocus, and Sakura finds herself lulled by the fascinating pattern of the Rinnegan, the sensation of a boat upon the sea. High tolerance of liquor be damned — she has the impulse to lay him out right here and subject him to unspeakably degenerate things, as Kiba so scrupulously described. 

“If you’re gonna keep doing this,” Naruto says, “Less make a code word. So I don’t hafta see.” Hiccups and wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Sasuke wrinkles his nose.

A clatter as the glass bottle rattles on the floor, rolling away. His teammates are staring, and he shakes his head in conversation with invisible dimensions of his lucid conscious. 

“You did _not_ finish all of that, Sasuke-kun!”

Raising both shoulders in a lazy shrug, the ghost of a smirk settles into the corner of his mouth and Sakura’s quite sure he might have rolled his eyes. Pointing at Naruto, she says, “I'm cutting you both off. That’ll give me time to sober you both up and we can depart on time. If they come before we get out, it’ll start quite the incident.

Naruto pulls himself upright and then wobbles to his feet. Points at various objects in the room, lamps and photos, challenging the inanimate for sport. “I can figh’ _anyone_.” 

“I’m alive,” Sasuke says to no one.

Sakura’s eyebrows furrow, and she approaches him on hands and knees; body language tentative as if readying for an explosive reaction. “What?”

“I’m alive,” he says again. A tone of mild surprise, rote and factual. Observations of passing clouds or the behavior of stray cats. Naruto’s arm drops to his side, dangling. 

“Course you are, you drunk bastard!”

“Naruto,” Sakura hisses.

Landing loud and hard on his knees, Naruto’s kneeling in Sasuke’s face. They surround him, but if he’s bothered or intrigued he doesn’t react. 

“If you asked me months ago, it’s not what I expected. Now, it’s clear there was no other possibility for me at all, but to live. Because of you two.”

“Don’t say this stuff,” Naruto says, face crumpling. The glossy expression in his eyes startles Sakura until she blinks rapidly to confront her own, the tears that form without her permission. Converging on him from opposite sides in the way of wary animals, expectant, their hot limbs crushing him in an unmeasured mess, the mess they exist as always. Tangled in an endless shifting of their bewildering and unfathomable affinity, forever flawed and infinite. 

They hold him like he’ll die right there, dissipate as desert dust. Tears dot the wooden floor in muted taps, the sounds of ancient lamentations. 

His apology is so muffled they can politely ignore it, pretend it never came into existence at all to grant him face. Naruto, over his sniffling, may actually not have heard. 

A lurching and gurgling sound comes from one of them, jarring and loud. 

“Ugh, I’m gonna be sick.” 

“You have no tact. None,” Sakura admonishes, speaking through gritted teeth.

“No, for real.” These last words leave his lips in something like a burp and a croak, and Naruto clambers to his feet, knocking over his teammates in the process.

Sakura yells after him: “You’d better take that outside, I’m not cleaning that up on my last day!”

Sasuke recoils at the sounds of his retching and throws his forearm over his face as he lies on the floor, defeated. Sakura places her fingers in the severe dip behind his jawline and ear, checks his pulse through force of habit as she’s done so many times before — in prison, in the hospital, in her bed. As if one day it will stop without warning and she’ll be alone.

The front door slams shut and they startle in tandem. On weak knees and bare feet, Naruto totters back into the room from outside, holding his stomach. “Was’ in that flowerpot?”

“Tomato plants, just starting,” Sakura says. 

“Welp, not anymore.” Naruto again rubs the corner of his mouth to get rid of the sick. “They won’t make it through that.”

With a heavy sigh, she gets easily to her feet. “Okay, it’s time. Come here, Naruto.”

Tucking him under one arm, she holds him as far off the ground as she can considering the difference in height; his ankles bounce and drag a little as she brings him to the couch and drops him in it. The cushion exhales as he does, and she sits him up straight. Returning from the kitchen with a glass of water and something small pinched between her thumb and forefinger, she crosses the floor and nudges Sasuke with her foot. “Can you sit up on your own?”

She returns to the couch as Naruto tips, lolls to the side; she holds him up firmly and presses the pill into his mouth against his weak protests. Sasuke makes it to his feet but sways, and when he does she’s there tucked under the stump of his missing arm with a shoulder wedged against his waist. Wonders how many times she’s supported a friend; wonders how many times she’s supported _him._

She lets him fall with an easy grace, the cushions exhaling again underneath newly added weight. Extending her pinched fingers again, she says, “I can feed you too, if you want.”

Clumsy on his tongue, but the words are unmistakable. “You’re beautiful.”

“Y-you’re drunk!” 

It seems impossible that her pink skin could succumb to a more saturated shade than the color of her hair, but it does. And with him sprawled out on the couch with a placid, unusually open demeanor coaxed into existence by their celebration, it’s too inviting to pass up. Especially with his eyes on her like this, the mismatched gaze pulsing and eviscerating, pulling every part of her inside out. 

A knee lands between his legs and he’s sinking, deeper, everything intent on swallowing him whole — death by viscid honey.

The blunt, freshly-cut ends of her hair brush his face in a last, tantalizing parting from a quickly stolen kiss, and when her laugh tap-dances on the elegant knot of his throat he opens his mouth to speak but all that comes is a _groan_ , always in a staccato, abstentious breath; as if, of course, his cock twitching against her doesn’t explain enough, as if he’s afraid that the things she does to him will be any more obvious. 

“Open up a little,” she says. “Can’t feel like I’m poisoning you, Sasuke-kun.”

He nods. She presses the tiny pill past his lips, tucking it under his tongue. Drops another kiss on the corner of his jaw and her fingers are on his face and she’s still speaking, but it’s difficult to understand her as it sets in. Her lips move underwater, distorted words.

“Dreamless sleep. And in an hour, you’ll wake right up.”

Speaking seems an enormous and impossible effort, so his eloquent response is to run his palm over the fibers of her sheer mesh shirt and mutter, “Oh, _fuck._ ”

“It does feel intense,” she responds kindly.

Tries to curse again because his tongue is heavy and even though he’s not always a man of many words, it’s frustrating to manage so many emotions at once — the weight of Naruto next to him, dead asleep, the swiftness of the medicine, and his fingers fist themselves in her shirt as he tumbles back into a void. 

“Soporific. Trips all the right receptors in the brain, prevents hangover. Genius, really. But it passes in a blink; you’re awake again. And it’s . . . 

_. . . pretty great._ ”

And Sasuke blinks.

Sakura’s legs are draped over his lap in her undisturbed sleep, chest rising and falling gently. Naruto’s staring at him, blinking with wide blue eyes. “Um, what the shit was that, and how do I get another?”

“That was—” Sasuke swallows hard, “odd.” 

“You mean ah- _mazing,_ ” Naruto gushes, leaping to his feet. Indulging in enthusiastic calisthenics, bending and rolling his limbs in bliss. “The only other time I’ve slept like that is, well, being in the hospital. Or a long mission. Or after a good meal. Or after good sexy—”

“No,” Sasuke says, holding up a hand. Frowns at the realization that Naruto probably sleeps well all the fucking time, a stellar contrast to his nightmares. Shrugging his shoulders up to his neck and working out a mild stiffness, he emerges from it with a hum and fire that’s, admittedly, quite unlike most returns to consciousness. Feeling sharp and brand new, he regards Sakura with curiosity, wondering if she used one herself; she nuzzles her face deeper into the couch cushion instead of awakening with a new thirst for life. This answers his question.

“Wake her up!” Naruto spins on his heel, waving his arms in large circles in childlike energy. “This is forever _your_ job now. You think yer broken nose was bad? I woke her once after she’d healed all of us and was sleeping. Well, okay, I _also_ ate her last dessert and knew she was going to be annoyed about it because she’d been looking forward to it,” and here he winces, sheepish, and bounds over to his rucksack. Starts packing it with the objects previously laid out at a frenzied pace in which Sasuke can see that it’s not all likely to fit. Stuffing in a familiar blanket, he continues. “So I thought if I just told her first she wouldn’t wake up and get angry, and to be fair the other girls warned me it wasn’t a good idea.”

“It wasn’t the dessert,” Sakura says with a yawn. They startle as she opens one eye, rubbing the other with the heel of her hand. “It’s ‘cause you grabbed my—”

“Ah right, yeah, that!” Naruto interrupts quickly, shaking his head. “Get up, sleepyhead! It’s our first mission together again!”

“I’m here.” Sakura yawns again, stretching her arms above her head. Seeing Sasuke frowning at her slightly, she brushes a bit of dark hair from his face. “How did you sleep? I imagine better than usual.”

“Mm. It was an interesting way to go under.”

Tapping his cheek with affection, she gets up from the couch and heads for the stairs. “I’ll change and then do a walk-through, but all of you should. Check the jutsu, the locks, anything missed.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, sans Naruto humming to himself from the medicine’s effects, moving with small bursts of unwarranted energy. He packs and repacks with Sasuke’s assistance, in pity, and they head upstairs a few minutes later, both shooting a passing glance out the window as they go. Twilight, far from sunrise.

Sasuke finds her leaning against the bed in the space they’ve been sharing, the mimicry of a budding domestic dream; she slips a long leg into her boot and pulls it on. Little give presents itself in the integrated shin guards; they flex with the stiffness of unuse. As she readies the other she takes a moment to card through her short hair, fluffing it and exhaling a long breath that skitters between her teeth. Locks slip through her fingers and settle back in place, the ivory skin of her neck a bright glimmer in the dim. Eyes flickering as if reading secret procedures written on the inward sides of her pupils. 

She pulls on the other boot, emitting a satisfied hum as it cradles her shin, snug. The heaviness grants a flimsy mental safety. Standing, she weighs the heft and listens to the sound it makes against the wooden floor, digging a heel in with a savage grin as if grinding something beneath her to fragments and dust.

Scratching absentmindedly at a spot on her collarbone, she starts as she feels his eyes on her.

“Am I running behind?” she asks, hands on hips. Lacking any trace of embarrassment despite the way his dark eyes linger on shadows and scars and the arcs of her body he’s most certainly already seen. Small, muscle and strength hidden in unexpected places. But his gaze doesn’t register as wanton, rather — curious.

“You’re our timetable,” he responds, stepping over the threshold, “as you always were. Because that idiot’s certainly not.” 

“I assumed. I keep time on so many people and things, even those that seem useless to others but make all the difference.” Smirks at him, dangling her mesh shirt on the last knuckle of the smallest finger. “Doses. Dates. The seconds that have saved many a life — and relationship,” she adds thoughtfully at the end.

Swinging up the mesh in a playful arc, she yanks it over head and neck, hair, searching for the holes of the arms. Another step into her orbit, but he simply observes her preparation, the modus operandi as a musical harmony: It’s in the tendons, in the marrow and always repeating, the lissome movements bringing together the versatile elements of a single, deadly tool. She’s lethal as the rest of them and perhaps moreso — consistently underestimated, fiercely analytical, and too caring for her own damn good.

Not a standard-issue flak jacket but nonetheless stylized in the vein of it, she feels the secure layers of the synthetic fibers, tensile but strong. A sensation not unlike an embrace, and in her restless anxiety she welcomes it with a quiet sigh. 

When he’s in front of her, holding the gloves she hasn’t yet asked for and still with that undecipherable expression, the tension wrought from the gravity of this mission and the intolerable heat coming from him might tear her apart before the rogue unit even gets a chance to kick in their front door.

In a crystallizing moment, he sees the shinobi she grew into while he was away: The weapon into which she’s been fashioned, and wonders what goes through the mind of dangerous men when they’re at the mercy of an assuming girl like this.

“Thank you.” She takes them, pulling on each one. Wiggling the tips and reveling in the comfort it brings: Perhaps if she can wrap up completely in this colorless uniform, lacking adornments and allegiance, she can forget the terrifying unknown they’re facing as well as what they’ll leave behind.

Sasuke takes the zipper of her slim-fitted vest and pulls it up the rest of the way, the teeth interlocking over the swell of her chest and continuing up to her neck. She takes his elbow, huffs.

“What’s with that expression? You seem bothered.”

Sasuke shakes his head, tossing away the notion. Surveys her in a slow sweep from head to toe. “You look as though you have no allegiance. Rogue. Bound to no village, no mission, no philosophy.”

“Well, you of all people know that’s not true.”

“It’s different on you. Refreshing, maybe?”

“If I didn’t know better,” she says, returning a hand to her hip, “I’d say the idea amuses you, Sasuke-kun.” 

In the intervening pause, an unforgiving pulse of heat. 

“When we’ve completed this,” he says, “when we return, we should talk.”

“About?”

“Probably domestic things.” Says it in a firm tone without a trace of embarrassment.

“Ah—!” It comes out as the expected prelude to a tirade, but it subsides quickly. Perhaps deciding it’s not even worth the effort to rebuke. _At a time like this?_ With a small pout, a pursing of the lips so clearly holding back a smile, she waves her hand at him. “Let’s see when we make it back. Right now, let’s get moving.”

With a smoldering, slightly mocking look, _if you insist_ , he reaches behind his back to grasp his shirt and pull it over his head in a smooth gesture. Incredibly deft, and she wavers in staying stern in the face of his smirk. 

Naruto leans over the threshold. “Okay, we definitely don’t have time for _this_.” Waves his hand in a circular gesture, like washing a window, encompassing them both. 

“Shut up,” Sakura says, making a face. “And turn off any lights.”

Unraveling a roll of bandages and facing Sasuke, she nods to Naruto and adds:

“We’re sneaking out the back.”

Naruto rubs his palms against the unfamiliar vest, squeezing the tensile material. Tests it like the buoyancy of water, curious. “These feel strange. But we sort of look like ANBU.”

Sakura reaches forward and yanks his hood over his shock of blonde, shaggy hair. Sasuke’s Sharingan gleams in the twilight as he levels it at the treeline to scan their full surroundings; moonlight dances off Sakura’s eyes as she follows his gaze, a sliver of sparkle and vim.

Taking each of their hands, she brings them in close.

“Like we were told,” she begins, “we have no allegiance. For the sake of this mission, we do not belong to any village and we operate as personas, and as shadows. If we are captured—” and here she swallows with difficulty, Naruto doing the same with a grimace, “—if we’re killed—”

Breaks off, fingers intertwining with theirs; men whom she chased for so long, backs she reached for, tripping and tired and weak. Shoulders she grasped when the time came for her to take a place between them, on the front lines of war. 

“We do not belong to anyone,” she repeats. “We are bound to no will or code that isn’t our own. There’s no record of our dispatch and no other member of the government, no ANBU, _nobody_ will have our location. We have no backup. So if the choice is between us losing one another and failing this mission—”

And she raises her eyes, finds ocean and charcoal watching her with a vigilance that almost makes her blush and falter in the speech that now seems melodramatic, too substantial — 

“ — just remember we only have each other, so we have to find a way to succeed at both.”

The proclamation weighs on them, no other sounds but the wind whistling through blades of grass, dew shimmering on their boots. 

Naruto, apt at shattering precious moments, groans, “Sakura-chan, you’re crushing my fingers.” 

Hands retreating as if burned, she buries them in her cloak in embarrassment. Steals a glance at Sasuke as he flexes his hand with an impassive face but doesn’t say anything. Naruto taps his stump against Sasuke’s with a grin.

She clears her throat, continuing: “Once we make it to the first checkpoint, we’re civilians. In that port city, we become different people. So I guess, tonight, we retire our title of ‘Team Seven.’”

“What are we now?” Naruto asks.

“Technically,” Sasuke says, “we’re no one.”

Sakura raises her eyes to the moon as it casts a light, potent and resplendent as the day, draping them, folding shadows into the creases of their dark cloaks and chasing fear from the lines in their faces. She inhales deeply and grins — and they do so with her, because they’re still young and dumb while the promise of adventure, despite so many waltzes with death and pain, beckons like a siren call. 

Change only blooms at the behest of the young, the unapologetic disregard and chaotic tides of the headstrong and hopeful. They’ve never quite managed pretending to be anything else. 

She mutters into the wind as it skitters around them, whipping through their hair and hoods, gathering speed:

“Zero.”

They disappear, leaving no trace — a whisper unheard.

.

.

.

In a defensive semicircle flanking their Hokage, they wait for the mutinous to come.

Occasionally Tsunade quietly laughs to herself with no invitation, subtle or otherwise, to join in. It may be amusement or anxiety, or the raspy chuckles of despair. They sink into comfortable roles they know: Shizune peers at her obliquely with an expression of concern; Shikamaru leans against the wall with folded arms, working his mouth in the way of pining for his missing cigarette, pressing off and falling back occasionally with his foot; Kakashi watches the twilight begin to lift with sharp eyes, trying to discern an augury in the dissipating clouds of night. 

Voices rise outside to a din unusual for so early — or late, depending on one’s perspective. Shizune flinches when the door bounces back on its hinges, but no one else reacts, least of all the proud woman at the desk in the back of the room.

Without an introduction the ANBU squad strides in, lacking any usual deference. As if it wasn’t enough to tip off the dissolution of faith and the hastening permanency of the wedge between the establishment and the new order, they remain on their feet with only the slightest suppressed instinct to kneel.

“Where are they?”

Tsunade tilts her head, mocking. “That’s a rude introduction.”

Her loyalists bristle at the lack of respect, but don’t dare move.

“At least,” Tsunade says, leaning forward on her elbows and lacing her fingers together, “you aren’t pretending to come in here with deference to this office. We’re way beyond that, aren’t we? At _least,”_ and here she raises her voice, and it crystallizes at the edges, “you aren’t pretending to be interested in rebuilding or protecting civilians or bending the _fucking_ knee. I respect that, however misguided.”

The original speaker shifts his weight; masked, it’s difficult to know what his expression holds in response to an accusation as weighty as treason. As the forward point in their diamond arrangement, he leads, a temporary usurpation of the power hierarchy which resists the one in the room.

“Where are they, Hokage-sama?”

“Ah, did you hear that?” Her tone is mocking, supercilious as she jerks her chin at Shizune, inviting her to commiserate. “I’m still accorded that little respect before they try to tear down the office and symbol of this village.”

“Is this why we aren’t able to appear directly in your office anymore, ma’am? Due to the fact that you seem to have an idea of what’s been going on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says with a blithe wave, “but correct, you don’t get the _privilege_ of using jutsu to simply appear in my office anymore after you attack people and shinobi you have taken an oath to protect — you don’t have free reign when you decide to back a resistance and rebellion that won’t serve — these — people!”

She’s on her feet, raising her chin and self up to full terrifying height. The last words come out as unforgiving knives to the skin.

“We’re in turbulent times, ma’am. There are multitudes of enemies out there, vacuums of power surfacing across the country—”

Tsunade snorts. “Spare me the hysterical propaganda.”

When he takes a step toward the desk the atmosphere in the room tightens, suffocating; in the same moment, those flanking her desk move defensively against him as if on strings, matching the potential for violence. Shikamaru and Shizune watch the three masked squad members behind the lead while Kakashi turns an imperceptible gaze on the forward, daring him.

“Tsunade-sama,” the officer tries again, “where are they?”

Inspecting a bright red fingernail, painted in the shade of blood just burst from veins, she fixes him with a stare so aggressive it causes him to retract his advance. “Who?”

“Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke.”

“Seeing as they’re shinobi of this village, they’re likely on a mission. After all, they most certainly earn their keep here.”

“It wasn’t known that they were reinstated.”

“Doesn’t sound like that’s your business, does it?”

“It would have been you who would have had to do it, along with witnesses and a record.”

His eyes sweep over Kakashi, Shizune, and Shikamaru; they remain impassive.

“If you’re seeking proof, it’s likely somewhere right on this desk. Though, forgive me,” she says, smirking, “as you can see there’s quite a mess here; after all, I do quite a bit of paperwork. And further details aren’t a concern to you, nor are you privy to them; village security, you know. They were desperately needed to investigate something, and those were my orders.”

“We have been ordered and authorized by the council— ”

“Ah, Shizune,” Tsunade cuts him off, “prioritize disbanding those withered, war-hungry—”

“—to collect Team Seven and take them into custody for questioning regarding their actions during the Fourth Shinobi world war—”

“— blind, traitorous crones so we can reform a council that isn’t half-dead and disloyal—”

“— particularly their problematic and subversive relationships with shinobi abroad and the dangerously close relationships within the team, such as Uchiha Sasuke—”

And Tsunade holds a hand up to still Kakashi and Shikamaru’s sharp movements; Shizune stops in her tracks, red in the face at the raised voices at her superior. In the same vein she is raising a hand to the ANBU, who is so startled at the lack of her temper he trails off into an uncomfortable righteous silence.

As I was saying,” she says quietly, “we will be disbanding the current council administration and reforming it with one that has their finger on the pulse of the current world; one that isn’t blinded by hawkishness and hate. One that isn’t currently trying to usurp their Hokage and unlawfully interrogate some of the most powerful shinobi this village has ever produced, who saved us from recent catastrophe. Because in hindsight, doesn’t that just sound stupid? Doesn’t that _sound,_ ” she says, eyes flashing, “like a great way to turn them against a village that has consistently failed to prevent discrimination and violence in its most noble clans?”

“Ma’am.” His voice shakes, vibrating down to its roots. He seems to lose air and has to start again. “They wiped out the squad we sent.” 

A sharp intake of breath — it pings around the room. Tsunade’s head starts shaking slowly. 

“You actually sent one after them? You must be a fucking idiot.”

As if pushed, she leans back a little, swaying as a branch in a rainstorm. “And you didn’t even send your own. How pathetic are you?”

“We dispatched the squad we thought would have abilities to handle their own. It wasn’t meant to deteriorate into conflict. By the time we arrived they were gone, but the defensive jutsu placed on the apartment—”

“Sakura’s apartment,” she corrects fiercely. Reminding them of the people they work alongside, the shinobi they know. “Those three are some of the most powerful ninja in the world. She, particularly, rose directly under my tutelage. You sent a squad out to act as military police in a capacity they never should have been in, and you paid the price. That blood is on your hands, and no one else’s.”

Shikamaru cracks his knuckles loudly in the stunned silence; Shizune’s face contorts into a tortured expression. 

“No,” he responds, though it’s weak, almost as if he doesn’t believe it himself. “It’s on yours.”

“Whatever makes you feel better.” Tsunade shrugs her shoulders, rolling her neck. “Did any live?”

Again, with a dry and raspy mouth, the lead manages to say, “Just one.”

Tsunade shakes her head and points to the door. No one moves. Shizune nods in a daze, giving the ANBU squad a wide berth as she departs.

“Tsunade-sama,” the lead begins again, beseeching. “If we don’t handle this — i-if we don’t take advantage of this crisis—”

“That’s exactly the issue; trying to turn openings into ways to consolidate power. Trying to fill it with war and profit and these hawkish ideas that have continued to cause rifts. You think the solution is to be aggressive, take an overbearing hand in the rebuilding of this land because you think we saved it only to rule it. Well, I don’t know who put that nonsense into your head, but none of that worked before,” and her voice drops an octave into a vicious hiss, “and it won’t work now.”

Kakashi and Shikamaru are alert and at attention now, heartbeats in the room beating at the same frantic pace — the anticipation, a continuation of a tale as old as time. The coup, the usurpation. Turning knives and ideologies on brothers and sisters. 

“You’d better hope,” Tsunade says, folding her arms, “that I don’t hear about or find any other rogue units conducting shit they shouldn’t be. I will smoke them out of their dark, traitorous holes.”

The power granted by her station barely augments the true terror, the simple fact of her capacity for powerful violence, a Sannin still walking the earth. Through gritted teeth she promises: 

“They will be interrogated and torn — to — pieces.”

.

.

.

“Identify yourself.”

Ino’s eyes, edged in brilliant blue like ice, become steely in response to the loud knocks on the front door of her shop. Tenten and Hinata hang back, the former with an angry expression and the other, apprehensive. 

“We have some questions for you about the whereabouts of Squad Seven.”

“Sorry,” Ino says through the door, “I’m not sure who you mean. And if you’re here on official dispatch from the Hokage, you should have a code phrase.”

In the intervening pause, tension blossoms. Ino looks at the women over her shoulder and gives them a quick smile. The grim, dim light of an unopened business shrouds them; it’s easier not to see one another in light too bright right now. Fear stays in the dark.

“It’s imperative that we obtain information about them as soon as possible, as a matter of village security.”

“Absolutely; I’m concerned about my friends and also want to help my village. But my security matters too, and you’ll need to provide your coded phrase and proof of justification from the Hokage.”

“You are not in a position to refuse an ANBU squad, Miss Yamanaka.”

“And you,” she presses, “are not technically police.”

A soft breath, a squeak — Tenten takes Hinata’s hand and tries to reassure her with a thin upturn of her lips. 

“Miss—”

“Let me ask _you,_ ” Ino says, voice rising, a ringing tone, “do you think Hiashi Hyuuga would be pleased to find out that you burst in trying to interrogate his daughter? That you terrified her in the early hours of the morning against protocol for no other reason than to look for the loudest, most obnoxious team in the whole village? The three most annoying and notorious ninja that exist?”

She always has a way of subtle sarcasm and condescension that’s admirable; it’s in her words, _Are you stupid?_

A beat, another. Mutters and reconsideration. 

“Pardon. We — we did not consider that. We apologize for the intrusion, but please send word if you have any useful information.”

“Sure.”

They hear them — they feel them disappear, their presence lessening upon them and feeling as a lifted weight. As if the atmosphere itself thins.

Turning back to them, Ino claps her hands together. “That takes care of that. Sorry I had to invoke your status that way, Hinata.”

Hinata shakes her head, a bit of pink high in her cheeks. “It’s fine. It worked for us; it might have saved us.”

“If they can’t find them now, it means they’re long gone. It’s not like you can miss ‘em,” Ino says, rolling her eyes. “A loudmouth, an ex-criminal, and the one with pink hair punching mountains!”

Tenten squeezes Hinata’s shoulders and grins.

“Changing the subject to something less serious, but — I heard _someone_ had a late-night visit the other evening. Tell us about _that._ ” 

.

.

.

Sitting across from one another in a booth in the furthest corner from the door, they snipe at one another. Always unable to leave one another alone, intertwined with crankiness and the chafing of smothering identities, civilian clothes, they wait for their missing member to return.

“It feels like slimy broth,” Naruto whines, rubbing his hands through shaggy locks in lieu of swiping at his face.

“I won’t help cover your whiskers again,” Sasuke warns. Sighs at how every simile and comparison out of his companion’s mouth has to do with ramen or food.

“Why can’t _I_ have a cool pirate patch?” 

Sasuke shrugs, watching the entrance out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, Sasuke—”

“No names,” he mutters, kicking him under the table. “I can’t believe they let you go on missions, much less go outside.”

“Well the only one who’s been on a real undercover mission is Sakura-chan, so, I’m doing my best here,” he snarks, pouting.

“Doing your best at what?” Sakura asks, hands on her hips. They both look up as she surveys the table, dressed in soft civilian clothes: A familiar navy skirt and knee-high boots, but with a white airy blouse and silver bangles. No trace of clan or village symbols in sight, nor the purple jewel usually bright against her pale forehead. Clicking her tongue, she fans the ferry tickets in her fingers with a _snap!_ as if surveying a hand of cards. “Naruto, stop touching your face. You have whiskers, for shit’s sake.”

“ _He_ has a purple eye that bends time and space,” Naruto grumbles. “And _you_ have pink hair.”

Sasuke tilts his head as if possibly conceding his point, avoiding Sakura’s narrowed eyes.

“Aside from those things, we look normal enough. Don’t use names,” she threatens, slapping a hand on the table. “Honestly, if we don’t talk too much, we’ll get on without a hitch.” 

“These pants make me feel like I have two kids running around and a house loan. Not very heroic.”

Leaning in close, Sakura speaks through gritted teeth. “You won’t be able to make any kids if you don’t quit whining. Let’s go.”

They follow her out, feeling stiff in their civilian clothes and collars. Naruto drags his feet, lingering next to Sasuke and whispers, “She’s super tired. I think that’s why she’s so cranky. Shoulda taken one of those magic naps too.”

Sure enough, she stifles a yawn as they head down the street toward the harbor. 

Sasuke gives him a look of warning, and they walk behind her, observing the overwrought tension taking refuge in her shoulders, neck, and spine.

Waiting on the boarding dock, all three can’t help fidgeting. With weapons and poisons packed thorough and tight in trunks laden with average clothes and ever more mundane distractibles, they feel vulnerable even in a crowd. Still, belongings can be jilted without remorse, and they’re all dangerous and capable without any of it, if it comes to that. 

They reach the top of the gangway and hand over their tickets. After an inordinate amount of time of the young man in some sort of official uniform dawdling, apologetic, over their paperwork, he asks them to step to the side.

Sakura watches two new officers join him and they huddle, having a discussion; it sets her teeth on edge, and she leans over the edge of the ferry railing, lips pursed. Naruto sighs and taps his foot, unable to stay still, while Sasuke watches her pink locks ruffle in the evening breeze with an ear tuned in to their conversation. Strains to hear in the shuffle of bodies boarding. 

She looks at him over her shoulder and turns back to them, arms folded under her chest, shivering in the cold sea air. The way they flip through their forged paperwork and glance back at them causes disquietude to seep in, an apprehension compounding at a terrifying rate the longer they deliberate.

The trio leans into one another in a show of huddling to block the chilly breeze. Sakura’s eyes start darting in that way she does when her mind’s racing, and Naruto picks at the cosmetic alterations to his face.

“I dunno what they’re talking about,” he whispers, “but this doesn’t feel good.”

Cursing under her breath, Sakura bites a freshly painted jade nail. Sasuke keeps an eye on the embarking civilians in a languid manner, projecting a disaffected boredom by the proceedings. 

She sighs heavily, drawing their attention. “Follow my lead.” 

Closing her eyes, she takes in a quick breath and exhales shortly after. Then another, sharp but shallow. The sounds cause Naruto to make a curious expression that fades into worry as she begins to turn pale and shudder. 

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Sasuke grabs her wrist, and as she continues the frantic pace of breaths as the color drops out of her face, the gasping, rattling sounds start drawing the attention of people around them, including the small huddle of guards. He taps her face, frowning. “Sakura.”

Knees giving out, she only emits a startled, weak cry as Sasuke shifts quickly to catch her limp form against his chest. 

“Oh my — is she all right?” someone cries out. 

Sasuke jerks his chin at the young guard who’s been watching, flanked by two others who look to be superiors. “You!”

Shrinking as if hit, he dithers for only a second, torn between the authority of his seniors and that of this man unknown to him. They make their way over, people darting out of their path. 

Perhaps it’s Sasuke’s sharpness, the way he carries some indefinable sovereign weight in the way he orders around others. Naruto carefully lifts one of Sakura’s eyelids, and lets it fall closed as the officers create a semicircle to prevent crowding, intrusive passengers. 

“Sir, I’m so sorry—”

“Are you in charge here?” Sasuke says. 

“Sir—”

And it falls from Sasuke’s lips much easier than it should — 

“Find my wife some water, immediately.”

Naruto’s eyes bug out with impunity, round as saucers, but he manages to turn the choke of surprise into a hasty cough. Bobbing his head, he cottons on. “Yeah! C’mon!”

The young officer doesn’t seek permission this time, himself paling in the face of this angry man missing an eye. Projecting an intimidating air that far outstrips whatever his own superiors would do if they had a concern. Sakura begins to stir, and Naruto and another officer maneuver her out of Sasuke’s grasp and lean her against the boatside. 

Voices of nosy passengers murmur around them:

“Oh, poor dear.”

“Goodness, they should have let her sit down.”

The officer in charge asks, “A lot of traveling? I understand it completely; can be rough on the wives. They’re not built for it.”

Sasuke nods in response to hide his bristling at the comment, mentally casting about for something sufficiently polite and domestic to say. Luckily Naruto always comes in at the last moment with the save, as is his knuckleheaded way.

“Especially when you’re having a baby!”

Sasuke’s visible eye widens, jaw clenching as he bites down on the verbal thrashing he instinctively yearns to give. 

“Ahh, congratulations sir!”

“Many. Thanks.” Sasuke says this through gritted teeth.

“Here she is, she’s coming ‘round.” The guard kneeling next to her inclines his head politely to Sasuke. “No harm done.”

Sakura’s eyes flutter open in a dramatic and thoroughly damsel-esque display; putting the back of her hand to her forehead, the color begins returning to her cheeks. “Oh! Oh my gosh, how embarrassing.” 

When she meets Sasuke’s gaze, there’s a sparkle in her green eyes that confirms, in a glorious instant, the depth of her talent. Pushing questions and curiosities aside in favor of completing the ruse, he kneels next to her and tucks short pink locks behind her ear in what he hopes looks just loving enough — however less dysfunctional shinobi do these domestic things.

Remembering they aren’t in the business of using names, he simply says, almost in the tone of a question, “Ah, wife.”

“Oh . . . yes. I’m so sorry.” With the ghost of a wilting smile, she surveys the men around her. “We’ve been traveling for a while and I’ve just been so exhausted. I didn’t mean to worry anyone. And these crowds, you know,” she trails off, gesturing with just the precise faltering and weakness. Drapes her fingers lightly on the bend of her collarbone.

The tone of her voice is so cloying, pressed with just the right tinge of hesitance and innocence; Sasuke wonders if she’s done it before. 

The young officer returns, panting a little from his hasty errand. With a glass of water in hand, Sakura smiles at him softly. “Is that for me? Oh, I hope I didn’t put you out.”

Naruto snatches it from the stranger and hands it to her. As she takes small sips, buying time, Naruto and Sasuke meet one another’s gaze, speaking without words.

“Listen.” The man who seems to function as the highest ranking officer bows his head. “Forgive our young guard, here. We received word of a shinobi team traveling across the country with the goal of interrupting shipping routes.”

“Ah, I see. But why would anyone want to do that?”

He regards Sakura’s inquiry with the fleetest, condescending smile. “Who knows why villages decide to do what they do? At any rate, nothing to worry your pretty little head about. Our young man was out of line; we’re not in the business of bothering expectant mothers.”

Sakura’s smile crystalizes on her face at the diminutive phrase, then disappears at the last few words. The way this man holds her eyes causes a crackling of defiance in response to his unctuous gaze. Sasuke, sensing a threatening ripple of her infamous temper, cups her chin and turns her face to his. 

“Let’s find you somewhere to rest. Wife.” The last word an aggressive afterthought, conveying a warning.

Sasuke and Naruto help her to her feet, and her malingering seems satisfying enough for the guards. Stamping their paperwork and returning it, they send them on their way with another hearty round of congratulations.

“Laid it on a little thick, huh?” Sakura asks this through a frozen smile with gritted teeth, aware of the eyes of others. Sasuke steers her to an open corner of the deck on the opposite side, and they lay claim to their space for the evening away from prying passengers. Naruto bounces along with oblivious cheer, but once he drops his rucksack on the deck he folds his arms and is unable to help bringing it up:

“Sakura-chan, I think you made yourself pass out like that.”

“Oh, you’re brilliant,” she snaps. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Sure, but you could have warned us!”

“So what other wonderful details did you add to my backstory while I was out?” Yanking a blanket out of her bag with a flourish, she shakes it out with a _snap_ and spreads it over the deck. “Do I build hospitals for terminally ill children and run a foster home for cats as well?”

“Bastard was the one who called you wife! Speaking of,” Naruto asks, leaning toward Sasuke, who has his eyes closed against the waning dusk, “that didn’t happen yet, right? It would be totally like you to run off and get married without telling your friends.”

Opening an eye, Sasuke shrugs, noncommittal. 

“He’s messing with you, Naruto,” Sakura says. Holding a hand over her eyes against the swirling evening sunset, she stares out at the glass expanse of undisturbed sea. 

After a moment they join her, flanking each side. The next steps of their journey linger in words unspoken and this malleable idea of loyalty. The events of their whirlwind week break apart as structures in an unforgiving storm, laid bare. 

All three turn to lean against the ferry’s edge, arms folded against the normalcy and quaint domesticity surrounding them — of families chivvying children to nest and winding them down to an evening calm, preparing them to sail across a dark and starless sea. Realizing, with one mind in an innate display of their recently knitted understanding, that their behavior isn’t quite sitting primly in the notch, in the true groove of civilian. 

Sakura recovers first, looping her arm through Sasuke’s and beaming at him. When he attempts a soft smile and inclines his head to her, he’s expecting a wifely phrase, a gentle thing, even a whisper about how to arbitrate who takes first watch. Words passing between them in a way that no one could ever hope to doubt love.

Tilting her head up, her lips brush against his ear: “He’s part of the web.”

A fraction of the sweeping adrenaline scurrying down his spine comes from her proximity, her heat; that he won’t deny. But as if summoned by the mere allusion he appears in their vision, crossing the deck in his uniform. Sakura lets a listless hand fall on Sasuke’s chest as the highest-ranking officer sees them, nods to each of the men while his eyes linger on her for just a second too long —

— and in that moment, she blinks long and slow, seeing beyond the mundane, doomed existence he’s donned as his alias. 

The moment splinters, sharp as knives and doomed to cut.

“When we interrogate him, and we will, I want to do it.”

Sasuke continues watching him even as he drops his lips against her hair in the mimicry of a kiss. “We were trying to avoid any of that.”

“Yeah, yeah, Sakura-chan,” Naruto whispers, “you said we were trying to stay low and avoid conflict. Don’t you remember that?”

She speaks through a bright smile. “Men like him are too arrogant to avoid slipping up, believing they control so much. He’s a stubborn knot in this web, like a nodule in the body. A tumor. Plus,” she adds, “when have _we_ ever managed to do anything quietly?”

Naruto frowns at her words, a flicker of concern. In what’s now becoming a default behavior, when at a loss for her mood he simply looks at Sasuke for assistance. 

“I’ll take first watch.” Sasuke’s tone leaves no room for discussion, and though her anxiety and exhaustion is obvious now in the shadows of the fading daylight, it’s only now that he realizes how she’s been running on fumes; that she’s been putting too much work into keeping them going to her detriment. She seems frayed at the edges, and that pain in the chest is back, _because he should have noticed_. 

He wonders, not for the first time, how many people might have perished if not for her hands. Knowing that this includes him and Naruto, her first and forever constants. If she knows that sometimes she’s the last layer between them and a reckless, impulsive dance with Death. 

Naruto settles his head on his backpack, staring up at the sky. Tugs on Sakura’s sleeve in a childlike plea to bring her to rest. She murmurs something quiet, _just a minute,_ and wraps a blanket around herself against the salty air, holding it at her neck in the manner of a cloak as she shuffles to Sasuke on her knees. 

“I’m still your ‘wife.’” 

She drops this in his ear, a placid admonition that could mean nothing.

She doesn’t make a sound when Sasuke’s hand grasps the back of her neck and his lips meet hers, hard, and she leads his tongue in a waltz that brings him just to the frenzied edge of wanting to find a dark closet or corner to love her in. 

Knowing that if his overwrought, damaged self at twelve could have sussed it all out, this girl would be the undoing of everything, all his vengeful desires and misguided years and hollow cravings. This is why he left, why he still, in moments, retreats. Intuition now, and perhaps a part of him has always known.

As he thumbs away an errant drop from the corner of her lips, he bids, “Goodnight.” 

Her green eyes as she retreats skewer him, a lingering afterimage which leaves him stirring and recoiling in one — ardent photophobia. 

Naruto grumbles _, the longest week of my life_. 

Sakura teases, _you have good things to go home to,_ eventually slipping into sleep. 

Sasuke remains awake and watchful, considering for the first time in many years that his life may still yield the things of which he’s only dared to dream. 

❦

It’s nearly a fortnight before Tsunade hears the first rumors, fleeting susurrations about a sunken ferry.

In the next few days it rises to a din, as close to one as fanciful tales of heroes ever get — the liberation of a trafficking shiphold, a revelation of a shadow network.

Bound for where, or for whom, well, those answers are swiftly smothered.

She reminds herself, again, again, that she sent them to 

save them.

When she paces the walls of her office, she knows soon it will be time to pass the torch,

perhaps sooner than she wants.

When Kakashi hears the whispers in the inns and izakayas and seedy pubs he can only 

smile and deflect any prying inquiries about his kids — because they’re not even his anymore. 

Knowing that any day he will be called on to take the mantle of which he never dreamed, 

hoping he’ll be able to see them whole again, in a world built by their wildest dreams 

by the songs borne of their legends.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap!
> 
> Opening qtd in "Man of my Time," Dalia Sofer.
> 
> Sorry that was so long. I wanted to put in a bit of groundwork for Part 20 which ideally will have a little more poli-ticking, more of our favorite team, and exploration of all the things that deserved more and better canon that I also had a little of in this one: undercover shinobi, soft skills, deception, and always always complicated and fraught bonds. 
> 
> I worked to focus on all of Team Seven in Part 19 and balance all of the relationships the best I can - and also how their dysfunction (because I love them, but it IS) affects everyone around them. I also felt that they deserved the pain and triumph of trying to be a team again instead of a cop-out disappearing arc. You know. And also bringing those things that happened in canon (particularly my girl Sakura) into the light and filling in some gaps that are skimmed over in the idea of such a dark shinobi system. 
> 
> I freely admit that my writing can be super indulgent to the fickle muse and I listen to feelings more than I should if I ever want to reach the level of published novelist (as opposed to the little poetry and scrips and scraps here and there I've managed to pull together and feel some pride in once in print). Poetry is my first and best love in realm of creative writing, anyway. 
> 
> If you're still reading this silly long author's note, thank you THANK YOU to anyone who has read this, or any of my work, who gives themselves up to the total winding whims of the things I publish. There have been comments given to me that straight up stop me in my tracks, because if you're taking the time to write vulnerable things about how something makes you FEEL, well you're the MVP ❤️
> 
> I'm taking time for a while to work on "Sirens" and play around in a different universe, and want time to sketch out Part 20 in full, and also I might have promised to write a smutty choking kink for someone and I shouldn't have to held myself to that BUT they're worth it.
> 
> I hang around on Twitter with the same username and Tweet about work annoying me, coffee, and RT fanart by crazy talented people - Peace ☮

**Author's Note:**

> The quote that opens the chapter is from Ocean Vuong, quoted in his novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous."


End file.
